A violent, emotional story that will resonate with readers who are sensitive to the growing tension among science, religion,...
This ambitious debut novel unites themes of political and religious zealotry with mysticism in a near-future setting.
Biologist Psyche Hershenbaum begins the story adamantly opposed to organized religion. When her mother dies alone in a superstorm that ravages New York City, Psyche re-examines her life as a scientist for a government-funded laboratory, which she suspects is using her work to create an environmental sanctuary for America’s wealthy and powerful. Her suspicions prove correct, so she resolves to use her scientific knowledge—and her boyfriend Ira’s computer hacking skills—to create a sanctuary of her own. On a hilltop in the Pacific Northwest, she and Ira build a community that quickly grows into a stable, science-based society with her as leader. Meanwhile, the country’s remaining political and religious leaders retreat into the belly of a giant, genetically engineered amoebalike creature that acts as a living bio-dome. They’ve also engineered human-lizard hybrids to perform slave labor. The dome’s authoritarian regime quickly devolves into a pseudo-Christian religious cult, rife with corruption and sexual assault, while the forest-dwelling scientists embrace a peaceful kind of spirituality that resembles shamanism. A violent clash decides Psyche’s fate and that of her community. At first read, Siegel’s story of a young biologist struggling to survive in a United States decimated by disease and climate change comes across as typical post-apocalyptic fare. Had it been written more recently, its strong stance on the perils of political and religious extremism could have been seen as a reaction to today’s headlines. But the author, an artist and “psychic astrologer,” says that she wrote the story in the 1990s and let it languish in a drawer for a decade. Its deep look at issues of morality and corruption will particularly appeal to disillusioned young people in the 21st century. In one truly remarkable turn, the once-agnostic Psyche and others witness actual miracles that seem to confirm the existence of an afterlife—a move that turns some conventional sci-fi and fantasy tropes upside-down.
A violent, emotional story that will resonate with readers who are sensitive to the growing tension among science, religion, and politics today.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-5005-0548-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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