Bracingly cynical and provocative future-shock cyber-SF.
In Dillenback’s future-set cyberpunk-thriller, a logistics specialist is forced into a rebel conspiracy to sabotage a corporate state.
It’s 2096 in an independent nation called the Federated States of Alaska. Decades earlier, a breakthrough development involving a superconductor exclusively controlled by local firm Cryosaga boosted the state into a business colossus. An epilogue chronicles the chain of 21st-century geopolitical spasms and conflicts preceding Alaska’s independence from the USA. The new nation is no haven of freedom, but rather a thuggish corporatocracy characterized by vast wealth inequality, runaway technology, ubiquitous brain implants, and murderous surveillance that quashes any resistance. Orphaned in the wars, Echo Kinyata comes from the destitute lower classes. His wife, Lyra, joined the active anti-Cryosaga movement but was punished through her data port with permanent paralysis. Echo was pressured to work for Cryosaga as a shipping/logistics expert (a “CrateGhost,” a virtual-reality upgrade of a stevedore). Lyra’s continued association with the rebels compels Echo to allow a contraband data chip to enter the FSA’s borders; what it contains could cripple or destroy Cryosaga. Impulsively, Echo steals the chip himself rather than passing it on. He quickly becomes a fugitive in a dystopic megapolitan landscape of post-humans, betrayals, e-waste, and cables plugged into the backs of skulls. Fans of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson should be transfixed, even considering the occasional narrative firewalls of flashbacks, bad guys who unaccountably let the good guys escape, and thick tech jargon. (One character “searched for the memory access ports and removed the cap from his expansion port. The DDR9 cartridge was the length of his pinky, with three minuscule rows of thousands of metal tines.”) Devoted readers of similar dark and complicated SF may struggle to suspend their disbelief and accept that an outfit like Cryosaga would knowingly hire Echo, a person with the access and motivation to do the company serious damage. On the other hand, this narrative fuzziness contributes to the Philip K. Dick–like sense of paranoia, unease, and uncertainty about whose side anybody is on.
Bracingly cynical and provocative future-shock cyber-SF.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9798901740316
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2026
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
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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