A riveting, if disappointingly brief, start to what could be a stellar sci-fi series.
In the author’s debut sci-fi thriller, a time-traveling man from the 1940s learns of a present-day Nazi plot.
Mel Taylor works as a genealogist specializing in finding missing people. He’s originally from 1948, but 13 years ago he used a device to time-travel five decades into the future. His latest job involves a boy named Jeffrey who vanished a year ago. Police wrote the boy off as a runaway, but Mel uncovers a link to World War II and an evil Nazi doctor who experimented with genetics. It turns out that Jeffrey’s disappearance may be part of a plot to target Mel himself, and that someone evil may be aware of his complicated history. Sens’ novel is a time-travel story, but certainly not one that bows to convention. Rather than focus on the act of traveling through time, it uses the sci-fi staple to establish Mel’s backstory. He keeps a low profile in a profession that also deals with timelines, but his body was affected by his time-jump in such a way that electronics typically malfunction when he’s near them. He’s surrounded by other exceptional characters, including Joseph, who’s possibly Mel’s only real friend; Emily, Mel’s part-time assistant, who seems unfazed when Mel says that he believes 1940s Nazis are alive and well in Iowa; and Zalbowski, Jeffrey’s father, who willingly faces perils in the hope of finally finding his son. The story is not without humor; for example, Mel is forced to yell across a room to talk with Emily, so that she may use a computer. The author ably generates suspense, as when a blue Volkswagen appears to be following Mel around. In the end, there’s an overwhelming number of unanswered questions, such as the origins of a holy weapon called the Sapphire Staff, which Mel uses against Nazis, and the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Mel’s brother, Sanford, and one of Mel’s friends. However, a plot twist at the end sets up a sequel in which, with any luck, answers will arrive.
A riveting, if disappointingly brief, start to what could be a stellar sci-fi series.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491711835
Page Count: 232
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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