by David Crane ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 2013
An imaginative sci-fi survival tale built around a cautionary, uncompromising war story.
A young woman finds refuge in an underground bunker during a nuclear war and then emerges to live on the ruined Earth in this post-apocalyptic novel.
Tanya Gray is about to start graduate school, but a dire warning arrives in a phone call from her dad. World War III has started, and the world’s nuclear powers have begun annihilating civilization. Tanya flees in her car, and then begs to be taken into an armored military vehicle. It deposits her at the Crystal Temple, an underground shelter that houses about 2,000 survivors, one of six operational structures in the United States. Run by the iron-fisted Gen. Douglas Pierce, the Crystal Temple is a comfortable and organized facility under military rule. Tanya is assigned kitchen and nursing duties, and soon begins seeing a guy named Jack Mitchell. Some thugs try to rape Tanya, but she defends herself against the brutal attack, and the perpetrators are tried and executed in a public hanging. Impressed by Tanya, Pierce gives her an intelligence job, reporting on possible traitors inside the community. While the nuclear winter kills scores of people above ground, a plot against the tyrannical Pierce is brewing, in part because the chief medical officer, Dr. Nathan Herring, is conducting bizarre experiments on survivors. Tanya and Jack are banished to the surface after their involvement in the plot is exposed, and there the effects of radiation sickness soon take hold. People now share the planet with panthers, humans who have evolved, thanks to a glowing tree, into 7-foot-tall creatures that are immune to radiation poisoning. Tanya finds that the panthers may hold the key to saving humanity in the midst of an ongoing world war. Crane’s (Makers of Destiny, 2017, etc.) nuclear holocaust novel is a sweeping political tale, full of both personal and international conflicts, while digging into some deeper questions about society and what it means to be human. Tanya is a savvy, intelligent protagonist with plenty of initiative and enough emotional capacity to love, even in the face of catastrophe. The reassuring and then sinister reality inside the Crystal Temple is characterized in a plausible manner. But while the fantasy elements in the second half of the book are intriguing, they are weakened by some overwriting and the invention of a convenient miracle serum.
An imaginative sci-fi survival tale built around a cautionary, uncompromising war story.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Foremost Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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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
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by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2016
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
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Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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SEEN & HEARD
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