A hidden underground city and its time machine may be the key to survival for a future Earth in this third novel in a series.
In an alternate version of Earth that’s similar to our own, but 30 years in the future, the Doomsday Virus has killed nearly every mammal, and the last humans live in scattered biodomes. Diego Nadales, a time traveler from our own Earth, is immune, and his blood could help provide the basis for a vaccine. At the close of the last book, he was traveling with 18-year-old Shannon Malia Kai, a brilliant engineer, from Colorado to better-equipped labs at a Chesapeake Bay biodome (“C-Bay”). Then she was kidnapped by the residents of a Christian fundamentalist dome; it’s rumored that they’ve murdered all the disobedient women there. Shannon musters her considerable wits to survive, while her mother, Dr. Lani Kai, searches for the underground city that holds a hope for saving humanity. David Kirk, the powerful leader of C-Bay, promises help—even though, on our Earth, his counterpart, Dave Kirkland, has only caused problems for Diego. Here, Kirk is married to Bella Sanborn, the woman Diego loves. However, the fate of the multiverse depends on Diego getting back to Isabella, which his original, failed time-travel mission was supposed to bring about. Then a note (in a man-made meteor) tells Diego to “Locate the Mountain. Use the machine. Find her. You have 15 days until it’s too late.” Orton (Lost Time, 2016, etc.) writes another intriguing entry in his ongoing series. Shannon’s adventures, in particular, make for exciting reading, especially when she and her young husband (from a forced marriage) venture into a kind of outback. It turns out that he’s not the monster she feared, and the author handles their relationship with tenderness. However, as with previous books, it’s not the romances that garner the most interest. Shannon lives by her scientist father-figure Matt Hudson’s dictum—“Identify the problem, engineer a fix, and Bob’s your uncle”—and seeing several characters put this principle into action is highly satisfying. Readers will want to stick around for a future entry.
Another appealing series outing with plenty of fix-it energy.Pub Date: April 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-941368-15-2
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Rocky Mountain Press
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
79
GET IT
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. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY
Did you like this book?
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
