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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
