A chaotic but wonderfully addictive mix of over-the-top action and brainy philosophy.
Smith returns with the second rollicking entry in his futuristic action/adventure series.
Jonas Gredas is on the wrong side of the law. He’s a genius responsible for the creation of Hela, an AI programmed to serve its creator first and humanity second. Jonas now finds himself accused of murdering his mentor, professor Bivins. He also faces opposition from a protest group consisting of one FBI agent, two priests, and a computer magnate, all of whom believe that Jonas and Hela will destroy the world—either through technological means or spiritual damnation (via Hela as a purported agent of the devil). Knowing he hasn’t got much time, Jonas quickly sets out to complete his “Mobius” project, which would supposedly heal his disabled body and eliminate death. Meanwhile, he also must decide whether to release his monstrous “hellions” to take revenge on his enemies. Jonas has an obsessive “love” for Sara Magaline, a young woman who can hear angels, and a growing attraction to Hannah Einstein, who comes to Jonas for help curing her mother’s otherwise inoperable brain cancer. This sweeping saga of good versus evil is at its best when challenging accepted wisdom on the inherent nature of humanity. When Hela tells Jonas that “the world has almost nine billion people; it will not miss a few. We need the new future you will bring. Wars are fought, people perish, but only we can save the planet and elevate mankind to a new plane of existence,” the sentiment sounds eerily like the rhetoric of history’s most ruthless and despotic leaders. The novel’s biggest flaw is its occasionally inconsistent rendering of certain characters’ speech and thoughts, especially Sara—who’s supposed to be 18 years old but tends to talk and think like a much younger girl: “He talks to angels like me? Sara’s heart races with excitement as Eli thinks she makes it all up, but she doesn’t, they are real.” Luckily this unfortunate tendency fails to overshadow the epic action scenes and thoughtful ruminations on what it means to be human. Jonas’ twisted sense of justice comes to a full, captivating crescendo as the story barrels toward a jaw-dropping cliffhanger.
A chaotic but wonderfully addictive mix of over-the-top action and brainy philosophy.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781958013052
Page Count: -
Publisher: Darken House Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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