An occasionally predictable but enthralling sci-fi romp that zeros in on bold characters.
In this novel, a scientist’s research into human cloning puts him on the run from authorities for decades while he secretly continues his work.
John Numen inherited 40 percent of his father’s pharmaceutical research company, allotting him wealth and his own lab. Having earned a Ph.D. from Harvard, he experiments with rhesus monkeys to perfect cloning. At the same time, in 2019, the 20-something falls in love with Amira Shinwell, a married woman. Unfortunately, Amira’s attempt to leave her loveless marriage leads to an unforeseen tragedy. But it’s John’s experiment with human cloning that places him on the FBI’s radar. He flees to a private Caribbean island under a false identity and sets up another lab. John spends years continuing to work on human cloning but soon designs specific equipment for an entirely different experiment. As his research includes an involuntary human subject, it’s perhaps not surprising he eventually catches unwanted attention from local law enforcement. Meanwhile, Irina Popova is a skilled mixed martial arts fighter in Russia with aspirations for the world championship. But her inevitable encounter with John won’t likely turn out well. Lee’s (Gravitational Leap, 2016) sci-fi tale favors human aspects over the technological. For example, there are few details about the process or John’s “cloning device.” The story is instead an engrossing character study following young, sympathetic John, who loses his father and whose mother abandons him, gradually becoming ruthless. Most readers will surmise what John is up to well before the story reveals it, from the second device’s purpose to the reasons he risks going back to America. In contrast, the narrative shift to Irina is quite jarring, as it temporarily sidelines John. Nevertheless, Irina is a meticulously established character while extended scenes in the MMA octagon boast some of the novel’s best, most dramatic prose: "Irina found the leverage position first and put her weight on her opponent to push her into the mat and struck her again in the face."
An occasionally predictable but enthralling sci-fi romp that zeros in on bold characters.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-946329-80-6
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Rising Phoenix Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2018
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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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