An action-laden, sometimes-moody tale with an unforgettable futuristic setting.
An enforcer for a 24th-century corporation strives to protect a young girl from his powerful employers in Hunt’s (Okuda!, 2018, etc.) sci-fi thriller.
Working for Syrch Corp affords Paul Thorne great pay and benefits. He and his partner, Rif Slater, have an office on Papen’s World, the main planet in Syrch’s home system. The men’s jobs as enforcers, however, entail threatening, harming, or even killing the corporation’s enemies. Their latest assignment comes from Syrch biochemist Dr. Warner Gibson, who walks into the office with a golden coin, a technological device containing info on a Syrch-sanctioned assassination. Paul and Rif immediately balk at the job. The target, Jillian Caldwell, is Gibson’s niece. Her late parents were Syrch employees who stole sensitive information that’s now on Jillian’s cranial mesh, an implant for interfacing with computers. But Paul is truly disturbed once surveillance reveals that Jillian is 9 years old. He doesn’t want to kill a child, but saying no to Syrch is a veritable death sentence. So he decides to investigate, certain that if he can discover why the corporation has put a hit on a little girl, there’s a chance he can save her. Unfortunately, Syrch has other enforcers who won’t hesitate to kill Jillian, who, along with Paul, will have to run and hide, if possible, off-world. Paul, meanwhile, learns that Jillian is special, with a considerably high IQ, which may explain why she’s a target. This short novel is a quick read, but it’s Hunt’s masterful storytelling that keeps the pages turning. Story exposition, for one, doesn’t stymie the plot, as background details, like corporations and planets, unfold as needed. The first half is superbly atmospheric. Perpetual rain in Papen’s World, due to its dense ozone layer, shrouds the planet in gray skies and allows Paul to hide in shadow, which is where he’s most comfortable. It’s not unlike film noir, with Paul as the flawed hero (he’s murdered before at Syrch’s behest) and Gibson as the untrustworthy homme fatale. What the book’s latter half forgoes in somber ambiance, it more than makes up for in action. Paul, for example, evades enforcers in vehicles or on ships but can’t avoid occasional scuffles and the injuries that often accompany them. Hunt’s prose throughout, be it a gunfight or surveillance, shines: “Suddenly a sharper peppering sound, like a tiny cannon in rapid fire, reverberated in the air, and lights flashed from the Raven’s twin miniguns, throwing lead in front of Paul’s car in warning.” Although some of the story is predictable, there’s an effective twist near the end. The novel includes lists of characters, places, terminology, and an extensive timeline of the series’ universe, of which this book is only a small part.
An action-laden, sometimes-moody tale with an unforgettable futuristic setting.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5320-0997-6
Page Count: 262
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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