Wildly thought-provoking climate SF with a fascinating time-travel twist.
Schaefer’s eco-thriller follows a group of researchers as they investigate a potentially cataclysmic event, the likes of which hasn’t occurred in almost a million years.
While in Alaska studying polar anomalies, Ethan Sites barely escapes with his life after witnessing inexplicable phenomena including intense northern lights, off-the-charts magnetic fluctuations, flash fires, and methane bubbling out of the permafrost. After he is saved by Sara Gathers, a cetacean biologist (whose mother, Julia, is the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and Mason Hahn, a fisherman and pilot, the group is tasked with following the magnetic North Pole as it moves southward, wreaking havoc as it travels. Entire pods of whales, confused by the changing magnetic fields, beach themselves. Thousands of birds fly aimlessly in circles. Electromagnetic interference makes flying aircraft impossible and disrupts the world’s power grids. As Sara and company begin to put the pieces of the planetary mystery together, they witness something unexplainable: After another powerful Pole movement, the group discovers dozens of dead or dying woolly mammoths (“Most of their large manes and long hair that carpeted them for warmth had burned away. The stench was overwhelming”). Before they can figure out how—and why—animals that have been extinct for 10,000 years are suddenly appearing in the modern day, Sara and the others are pulled into the past by the strange atmospheric phenomena. While the narrative features an ensemble cast of well-developed characters (Mason’s ship captain, Ray Barron, steals the show), nonstop action and adventure, breakneck pacing, and more than a few bombshell plot twists, it’s the underlying reality of the looming global disaster that gives this novel its brass-knuckle punch: “Soon, climate change will reach a tipping point. In ten years, one-third of all plant and animal species living in the nineteenth century will be gone.”
Wildly thought-provoking climate SF with a fascinating time-travel twist.Pub Date: April 11, 2024
ISBN: 9798989060863
Page Count: 432
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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