This harrowing depiction of distant-future Earth makes for an exhilarating story.
A 23rd-century scientist questions the massive project meant to save the climate-devastated world in Burgin’s SF series launch.
The key to saving the dying Earth may be Project Lux Umbra, a “lattice” of satellites that filter, reflect, or diffract sunlight. Adira Sol, a planetary biologist and systems ecologist, works on an orbit station where she monitors and tunes the satellites. It’s a dream job made even better when she meets and quickly falls for engineer Elias Renn. But after they’re both reassigned to a planet-side station in Colorado, Adira gradually loses trust in the project—why does it seem more invested in long-term stability than recovery? In one of the underground cities, she stumbles onto a “resistance movement” of humans opposing the artificial intelligences that built the planet-salvaging satellites. There’s much more to Lux Umbra than Adira knows, and she must determine whether the project’s measures for the greater good come at too high a price. Burgin delivers this tale with stripped-down, Hemingwayesque prose: “Her hands flew across the interface. Overriding neural lockouts. Disengaging hardline feeds. Stripping back the cognitive overlay—piece by piece by piece.” This instills the narrative with a frantic pace and an unrelenting sense of urgency as Adira finds herself in several tense situations, from searching for someone she’s lost to sneaking into a facility she definitely isn’t supposed to be entering. The topical environmental message is overt as protests, riots, and violence in the story stem from the belief that Lux Umbra is essentially killing the sky. Adira’s deeper dive into what’s really going on stirs up an intriguing mystery that leads to a handful of genuinely surprising revelations. Along the way, readers meet engaging characters who will, one hopes, return in a sequel.
This harrowing depiction of distant-future Earth makes for an exhilarating story.Pub Date: May 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798282371406
Page Count: 394
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
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
Come for the forensics, stay for the nonhumans.
A Christmas bout between Kay Scarpetta and the Phantom Slasher.
But first, Scarpetta, Virginia’s chief medical examiner, has to figure out how software designer Rowdy O’Leary died. Fished from the Potomac River on Christmas Eve six years after a hit-and-run driver left him permanently disabled and a week after he plunked down the cash for a pricey emerald ring, he fell off his fishing perch and drowned—or did he? Scarpetta’s examination of his body is cut short by two disturbing developments: the discovery of an unidentified woman’s remains buried on the grounds of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital, and celebrity TV reporter Dana Diletti’s report that the red-eyed ghost associated with the Slasher’s three murders has floated through the window of her home. She’s got video, too, and the apparition looks real and scary. The final blow to Scarpetta’s plans for a Christmas getaway with her husband, Secret Service forensic psychologist Benton Wesley, is an attack on an Alexandria home that kills Mercy psychiatrist Georgine Duvall, who used to treat Scarpetta’s niece, Lucy Farinelli, and nearly kills graduate student Zain Willard, White House intern and nephew of presidential candidate Sen. Calvin Willard. This time the Slasher’s ghost has been spotted on the scene by none other than Pete Marino, head of investigations for the medical examiner’s office and Scarpetta’s longtime sidekick. Cornwell’s use of Robbie, Zain’s robotic dog, and Janet, Lucy’s AI companion, integrates the futuristic elements she favors more successfully than in her recent outings. But the solutions to all these mysteries will leave fans of the venerable franchise pursing their lips rather than gasping in awe.
Come for the forensics, stay for the nonhumans.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781538773963
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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