This solid actioner with heart follows in the tank treads of a well-worn genre.
Two decades after the collapse of civilization, two resourceful survivalists try to protect a new city-state persevering in a savage future dark age.
“The end had not come as one defining gestalt moment; rather it had come as a slight change in the wind” begins Catlin’s post-apocalypse action debut. In the not-too-distant future, a combination of factors—climate change, resource and food depletion, wealth inequality, plagues, and, finally, wars—has destroyed organized society. Twenty-two years later, in the remains of California, Thomas Wolf, a savvy survivalist roaming the urban wastelands haunted by predator gangs and cloistered holdouts, finds a natural ally in Allen Damewood, another gentleman warrior with helpful talents in weaponry and technology. They set up housekeeping in a fortresslike dwelling where Wolf’s armaments include a thoroughly armored, weaponized, and computerized airport-facilities vehicle dubbed the Rig. The two imagine themselves isolated among roving packs of enemies and small, subsistence-level colonies. They are thus amazed when a reconnaissance helicopter crashes nearby. Though the crew perished, the copter seems to come from an advanced and functional human settlement somehow rising from the ashes nearby, and the two men take the Rig to investigate. Indeed, they do discover the future equivalent of an impossible Shangri-La. But they also encounter a deadly threat to the stronghold. The rest of the series opener turns into a fairly exciting battle, enough to keep pages turning. Catlin breaks little new ground in the “prepper” military-Armageddon genre, but he tells the muscular story well, with a couple of likable and smart bromantic leads—think Butch and Sundance with RPGs, battleground strategy, and combat software moxie. In some quiet spaces, characters persuasively lament the tragic yielding of community and goodwill to barbarism and total war, a cautionary tale for contemporary readers. The Rig itself is a cool creation, if a bit of a deus ex machina in the most literal sense. In addition, a ravishing redhead in the oasis is predictably available for Wolf. Enough loose ends hint at sequel possibilities, although this rousing volume can be read as a stand-alone.
This solid actioner with heart follows in the tank treads of a well-worn genre.Pub Date: May 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-79267-4
Page Count: 607
Publisher: Out Reach Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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