A sci-fi saga that asks a lot of its readers, but the payoff is a highly nuanced sci-fi experience.
Debut author Kerr offers an epic sci-fi novel that chronicles the history of a distant planet over some six millennia.
Lieoptay-Noot was an “Elder-Teacher” who had insights that “no other seer from any other time could match.” His writings, known as the “Three Augured Climacterics,” steer the grand tale that follows. In the First Climacteric, readers meets Bisel and Padran Penriebës, twins attending Sjaarkrom Institute’s Academy, where they tend to excel when they’re placed in proximity to each other. Although Bis and Pad seem to be the best of the best, questions linger concerning their capabilities, which seem to decline when they’re separated. Add into the equation Bis’ troubled dreams and Padran’s doubts about their lot in life (“I refuse to believe we are just unconscious or unwilling participants in some story, some play,” he says), and the brightness of their future seems uncertain. The Second Climacteric begins with a figure named Iyrës embarking on a journey away from home. His stated goal is to reach the Daumkwaa region in Sabaysjoa, and it’s almost immediately a difficult trek. As he admits to another character, he’ll soon need the help of a gifted healer if he’s to ever reach his destination. In the Third Climacteric, Thesik Zlaifë is on her way home as she ponders some heavy questions, such as “Why are my days and nights an ever-expanding galaxy of questions within a universe of unresponsive emptiness?” Where will such questioning lead her? The book interweaves the three Climacterics with the story of Lieoptay-Noot himself, creating a work that’s extensive and complex; indeed, any plot summary merely reveals the tip of a dense iceberg. Taken as a whole, the book even makes epics such as Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) seem like light beach reads, and to understand all of the many components and emotions at play, readers will need patience. This can be difficult at times due to the prolific amount of characters and motivations as well as the author’s penchant for extraneous details—particularly during culinary descriptions, as when one character engages in “chewing interspersed with musing sounds and gasps of satisfaction.” Still, even when the book makes sure to point out that some “trevik juice” is freshly squeezed, it maintains a unique voice throughout. The characters make frequent use of interior monologues, and these, in turn, offer readers some lengthy but informative insights: “I have no strength for anything more, my chest constricting as a feeling of overwhelming responsibility and rising inadequacy churn through me,” says Zlaifë at one point. The numerous players do take time to develop, but the author still manages to imbue each of them with realistic thoughts and existential fears as the story progresses. And although these many thoughts and fears—and food descriptions—fill a great many pages in this lengthy book, readers will find the end result to be nothing short of epic.
A sci-fi saga that asks a lot of its readers, but the payoff is a highly nuanced sci-fi experience.Pub Date: July 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5412-5484-8
Page Count: 818
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 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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BOOK TO SCREEN
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