A conceptually promising but unevenly executed fantasy.
In this debut fantasy novel, an amnesiac questions his dreams in which he’s a young medieval warrior.
In a psychiatric ward, a man with no memory starts having dreams about wizards, magic and wild beasts. In the dreams, he’s a man named Zack who lives in the Silver City, Teuran, on a planet that orbits two suns. His therapist, Dr. Peters, suggests that he keep a dream journal to bring focus and continuity to the fantastic adventures. In the dream-story, Zack’s father, Zeratok, and best friend, Kera, soon appear, as does Miku, a wizard from the land of Menak, who helps Zack embrace his destiny as the wielder of Stryker, a mystical sword. Meanwhile, the evil mage Xan’dros steals Stryker’s companion sword, Verilous, and uses it to destroy Teuran. A legendary hero named Seisoa arrives to help, and when the smoke clears, Zack and Miku head to Menak to join the Rikin Alliance of mages. In Menak, an instructor named Stein begins teaching Zack how to manipulate Soulfire, the force that permeates all life. Back in the psych ward, Dr. Peters gravely reads the amnesiac’s journal and insists that the patient finish his complex tale. Hastings delivers this hugely imaginative story and its world with clarity and speed. His prose is often evocative, particularly when describing weaponry: “Taking one last look at the naked blade, with its gentle glow of infinite, hidden power, I sheathed it.” He also has a poetic take on magic: “Soulfire is the connection of our souls, because our souls and even matter itself are born from it.” Much of the rest of the prose, however, is hobbled by wordiness, and readers may find some sentences barely comprehensible (“I could not make myself want to forget [her], yet the feeling seemed to not stop forcing this desire on me either”). Overall, the book’s structure, with each chapter corresponding to days recorded in the dream journal, is intriguing; however, most of the tale’s conflict happens early, leaving the second half feeling a bit too lightweight.
A conceptually promising but unevenly executed fantasy.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491801192
Page Count: 228
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 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
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
