Outlandish, hectic, and sometimes illogical but undeniably entertaining.
An average Joe has a chance to be a superhero and face off against a supervillain—using tech that may be deadly to the user—in Beem’s (Abyss of Chaos, 2011) offbeat comedy.
Edger (Ed-jer, as he constantly stresses) Bonkovich is a typical Dork—tech support at Über Dork, a subsidiary of InstaTron in San Diego. He knew InstaTron CEO/founder Mike Dame back at Notre Dame, where they discussed concepts Mike used to earn a degree and start his company. But now Mike needs Edger’s help. Someone has stolen InstaTron Tron, a cumbersomely named artificial intelligence, and released it. The villainous AI seems hellbent on creating anarchy. With an injection of nano-neuro medicine, Edger can access, via his own mind, the dreamlike Collective Unconscious (a database of everyone who’s ever lived) to recover the InstaTron Tron. Unfortunately, the AI is a necessary component to prevent the brain from information overload; without it, Edger will die within 96 hours. Complicating matters is a fiendish organization called Nostradamus. But Mike has also given Edger a ring that uses nanofibers to outfit him with a body-armored “space-ninja costume.” He even stumbles upon a few surprising allies in the Collective Unconscious, like Bruce Lee. Beem laces his absurdist plot with kooky imagery. The AI’s biological host is, at one point, a cow, and a nearly 300-pound defensive tackle may be a spy. These gags make it easy to ignore the sometimes-muddled plot points (the motive for stealing the AI is unclear). The characters, however, are earnest and multilayered. Edger, like any good superhero, battles baddies as well as personal issues, e.g., low self-esteem. He’s funny, too, dropping random words into common phrases (“What the kumquat?”).
Outlandish, hectic, and sometimes illogical but undeniably entertaining.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Escapist Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
© Copyright 2025 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.
