An effective, moral-driven sci-fi fable clad in alien-invasion costuming.
Society (and possibly human evolution) faces upheaval when babies resembling gray-skinned aliens appear all over the world.
Suddenly, random pregnant mothers around the world give birth to babies with what becomes known as Handel’s Syndrome: froglike gray skin, oversized heads, huge dark eyes, spindly limbs —the stereotype of a Whitley Strieber flying-saucer alien. Officialdom takes little notice of the supposed birth defects at first, with the exception of hard-charging CIA spook Ray Johnston, who finds missilelike empty casings made of alloy Not of This World—evidence of an ET bioweapon seeding the “HS children” and creating an insidious vanguard for an alien invasion. The ensemble narrative, formidably spanning generations, cuts between Johnston’s rising political career, based on alarm and paranoia, and a few of the maturing HS-born “Alien Americans.” Franklin Trinity was abandoned on a church doorstep and raised by compassionate priests and nuns; nonetheless, the increasing intolerance and violence against his kind radicalizes him into becoming an enemy of “monkey people” and their “monkey god.” Jim Miller was born to an initially shocked, uneducated Texas farm family; nonetheless, their acceptance of his appearance makes him a key figure in defending the new species. Peloso (Tiny Ghosts, 2014) visits sci-fi territory previously trodden by John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos and Richard Matheson’s short story “Born of Man and Woman,” but he takes it to a big-picture, humanist level. Characters do tend to come across more like ideas and stances rather than fully three-dimensional personalities, and the dialogue leans toward simplistic exposition or dry scientific explanations (during a briefing, Johnston discusses the odd casings: “The first significant thing that we found was that this material isn’t typical of any known alloy we’ve put into space. I’ve had the object analyzed, and it has a very strange isotopic spectrum. It’s primarily made of steel and tungsten, but the isotopic ratios are unlike those typically found on earth”). But in the honored Rod Serling sci-fi tradition, the premise presents a strong allegory of bigotry and the self-fulfilling worst expectations inherent in xenophobia. Even with the wobbly incorporation of Roswell/Area 51 and UFO mythology, the message comes across powerfully, especially in light of the war on terror.
An effective, moral-driven sci-fi fable clad in alien-invasion costuming.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-931468-26-8
Page Count: 338
Publisher: The Invisible College Press
Review Posted Online: March 11, 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
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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