A tight and entertaining spin on well-established elements of SF and horror.
A young woman in search of her missing twin sister stumbles upon a strange North Carolina town harboring out-of-this-world secrets in Frelick’s SF novel.
Moira McCann last received a text from her wayward sister Claire two days prior to arriving in the curious hamlet of Allenville. (Moira hopes to find her sibling there because Claire was last seen at the nearby interstate highway.) Allenville is an extremely weird place—everything seems just a little too quaint, and the residents all look as if they could be employed as high-fashion runway models. What Moira doesn’t yet understand is that there is a far uglier and much more bestial element lurking amidst the beautiful people of Allenville, and that it has targeted both her and Claire. Despite the town’s tranquil appearance, Moira also comes to discover that Allenville is a deeply divided community resting on a terribly uneasy peace. Police Chief Seth Call is determined to preserve this fragile détente at all costs, but he also resolves to protect Moira and hunt down the culprit responsible for her sister’s sudden disappearance. Initially put off by Call’s by-the-book attitude, Moira cannot deny the strong attraction she develops toward the local constable (“She hesitated for the space of a breath, captured by his eyes”), and the feeling is mutual. Claire, meanwhile, is just trying to survive a fate worse than death at the hands—and claws—of one of Allenville’s more unsavory inhabitants; trapped in darkness, she is routinely visited by a hulking jailer who makes his horrific intentions painfully clear. Can Claire survive long enough for her twin to find her? Frelick adeptly employs parallel action to track the McCann sisters on their individual journeys through Allenville and create real tension as the tale unfolds. As eviscerated bodies begin to pile up and the pressure mounts in Allenville, the questions remain open. The author blends SF and horror effectively, cleverly mixing classic themes of alien space invaders with shapeshifting werewolf lore. Both genres have always had a fiendish penchant for women in distress, and the creatures of Allenville do, too.
A tight and entertaining spin on well-established elements of SF and horror.Pub Date: July 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798329016970
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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