Eco-tinged SF marked by deep-space chases, invigorating combat thrills, and endearingly fanciful physics.
The interstellar craft Sun Wolf pursues a villain intent on sterilizing habitable planets in Jeffrey’s SF novel.
The author continues his Space Unbound series with this installment, following Sun Wolf (2020). It is the year 2218, in the aftermath of the discovery of “voidoids,” mysterious structures akin to black holes that permit starships to jump light years in an instant and travel to numerous once-inaccessible star systems. It is through a newly opened “astrocell” that a supremely evil and ambitious Earth man, Cardew Seth Amon, escapes from regulated Bound Space with stolen technology and plans for his own galactic empire. Hunting him is the cutting-edge “zero-point drive” spacecraft Sun Wolf, headed by intrepid commander (and old Cardew nemesis) Aiden Macallan, who is abetted by a multi-talented crew adept at navigating the new mysteries and perils of these spaceways. After an attempt on Macallan’s life, the heroes determine that Cardew has a growing army of zombie-like, self-replicating, virtually immortal “cloneborgs” (“an amalgamation of human clones and synthetic augmentation. The clone part had been derived from Cardew’s own genetic material”) intended to populate habitable worlds and replace humanity entirely. Ecological concerns are a side theme in the Space Unbound series, and while the sermons are not so prevalent this time around, there is still the acknowledgment that humanity has been a lousy steward for nature. People still fall for Cardew’s long-distance online deepfakes and anti-vaccine propaganda, spurning the sustainability wisdom of good guys like Macallan (who, thanks to a previous adventure, is intimately attuned into the rhythms of life throughout the cosmos). Readers should appreciate that the author does not depend on aliens who are mere Spock and Worf knockoffs (thinly disguised earthling types in minor makeup), though a cozy Starfleet milieu prevails aboard the courageous Sun Wolf, and the cloneborgs make for a serviceable parallel to Star Trek's menacing Borg Collective.
Eco-tinged SF marked by deep-space chases, invigorating combat thrills, and endearingly fanciful physics.Pub Date: April 29, 2023
ISBN: 9780998674261
Page Count: 422
Publisher: JeffreyJazz Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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 fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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