Intricate next-generation cyberpunk with a head -spinning finale.
On a dangerous, corporate-colonized moon of the future, a cyborg music star, a heartbroken artist, and a hacker are ensnared in intrigue and murder.
Adams-Dufresne SF noir mystery is set on Earth's moon in the late 21st century. Decades earler, circa the 2040s, attempts to create international, viable human lunar colonies failed, leaving the cold, inhospitable moon with abandoned mines and underground complexes. Here, the unsavory TEM corporation constructed the Dive, a megacity drawing misfits and suspicious character. Its economy is based on next-generation internet, vice tourism, and questionable cryptocurrency. Among the characters roaming this dark world are Mirian Sasklowic, who finds it easier to live life with multiple prosthetic limbs in the moon’s low gravity. She seeks to reinvent herself as “Tonic,” the frontwoman of the rock band AKA:NO. Her faltering career attracts police attention when AKA:NO’s release “Kill-Song” appears on the playlist of an enigmatic gang member and terrorist who slaughters several commuters in the public transport. In a parallel (and much fuzzier) plotline, graffiti artist Kaet Westergaard, nursing multiple heartaches, partners with his hacker ex-girlfriend, Blau, to unearth the Dive’s most guarded secrets, using the stolen credentials of a missing, possibly mob-connected VIP. Either plotline has the potential to anchor an action-thriller, but Adams-Dufresne instead unusually delves into the characters’ psychologies, their often unhappy relationships, and their attempts to maintain equilibrium in an off-planet environment. This last becomes especially critical for Tonic’s tale as her extensive cybernetics fail and her post-operative delirium seems to provide clues to her traumatic backstory. However, a late-arriving major twist awaits the reader—and then a few more beyond that, splintering what was already a moody, meandering narrative through environments not unlike those in the classic film Blade Runner: “Blocky shapes line her vision, multiple rows of them, all covered with a layer of dust except one, where the dust and the cloudy vinyl cover beneath have been peeled back, like an old scab clinging to the edge of an even older computer.” Those with adventurous tastes for extremes of cyberpunk will be best equipped for this lunar journey.
Intricate next-generation cyberpunk with a head -spinning finale.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9798989325801
Page Count: 452
Publisher: ArtificeLux
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2024
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
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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