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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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