Lean, relentless and terrifying.
The war between the Haters and the Unchanged rages on in the follow-up to Moody’s taut horror/suspense debut Hater (2009).
When readers last saw Danny McCoyne, he and a bunch of his fellow Haters had just escaped certain death in a facility set up by the Unchanged, the people who were not affected by whatever it is that causes the Haters to feel an urgent need to kill those who are not like them. Now, several months later, war has broken out, with the Haters running free in the countryside while the Unchanged have withdrawn to cramped refugee camps in major urban areas. The Unchanged have greater numbers, a semi-functional society and a military on their side, while the Haters have single-minded focus, brutality and an unquenchable lust to kill going for them. Which isn’t to say that some Haters—Danny included—can’t still use their brains. Danny is currently on a quest to find his daughter, Ellis, who, unlike his wife and two sons, is also a Hater. Then, he is captured and tranquilized by a small group of Unchanged. He wakes up chained, under the “care” of Joseph Mallon, an Unchanged who attempts to train Danny to keep his need to kill in check. Mallon’s techniques seem to pay off. Eventually, with some effort, Danny can just manage to be unrestrained in the same room as Mallon without killing him, which is a significant accomplishment for a Hater. Mallon decides that Danny is ready to meet Sahota, the man in charge. But can a Hater really stop hating? If Moody’s Hater books follow the familiar zombie story of civilization rent to tatters by mindless, bloodthirsty former humans, they turn it on its ear by speaking with the voice of one of the zombies rather than one of their victims. Readers have seen a pre-Hater Danny head off to his dead-end job, get frustrated with his kids and engage in other everyday activities. That, along with Moody’s spare prose, makes the book’s scenes of brutal violence all the more affecting.
Lean, relentless and terrifying.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-53288-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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