Standard zombie fare from Moody (Dog Blood, 2010), slowed down to a lifeless crawl.
When a fast-moving virus decimates the population, the few survivors struggle to make lives for themselves, even as some of the dead come back as mindless zombies.
The virus spread at an incredible speed, leaving almost everyone dead, seemingly in minutes. Those few unaffected by it were left with nothing but questions. What caused the virus? Did it spread worldwide? And what to do now that almost everyone is dead? In a smallish English city, a tiny group of survivors finds one another and holes up at a community center, but just when they’re starting to settle in, something mind-boggling happens—a large number of the dead slowly get up and start shuffling around. One survivor, Michael Collins, senses danger and decides that it is no longer safe in the city. He suggests that the group head for the relative safety that isolation in the country would provide. Most of the group decides to stay at the community center, but two others, Emma Mitchell and Carl Henshawe, join him, finally settling in at a remote farmhouse. They barricade themselves inside, mostly out of revulsion for the disgusting, but seemingly harmless, shuffling corpses. Before long, though, they notice a change, as the bodies seem to become increasingly aware of their surroundings, and more aggressive. Soon, isolated from a world that is mostly dead and surrounded by rotting, potentially dangerous corpses, the survivors begin to wonder whether there is any point in staying alive. The book trades the usual relentless drive of typical zombie horror for a slow, almost stately buildup. Unfortunately, the pace is far too slow, especially since the reader knows exactly where the story is going early on. Even though none of the characters utter the word “zombie” (which is odd, considering), it seems likely from the start that at some point the seemingly harmless re-animated corpses will turn on the survivors in relentless waves. The fact that it takes so long to get to the good stuff only makes the plot drag more.
Standard zombie fare from Moody (Dog Blood, 2010), slowed down to a lifeless crawl.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-56998-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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