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
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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