An action-packed techno-thriller with a fierce protagonist.
A teenage girl discovers that she’s the product of an experiment and seeks revenge in Holloway’s debut YA SF novel.
In Boston in the year 2030, 17-year-old Krista Kinsley is living on the streets, keeping under the radar so that her abusive father won’t find her. Her only friend is Jason, a chef who regularly provides her with a warm meal and conversations about his studies in physics. She has some difficulty communicating due to a stutter and seizure condition, but she’s also a quick thinker who comes up with fantastic solutions to impenetrable physics problems. After Jason arranges for Krista to meet Ron Arkin, a professor at his university, she learns that, when she was a child, she had a brain injury that the professor treated with a high-tech implant as part of an experiment. A tech malfunction leads to a reset, and, as a result, Krista develops incredible, enhanced physical abilities. Soon, numerous people are after her, including Arkin and his shady associates, her contemptible father, and Nathan O’Connell, a cop with a tragic past. All have different agendas, and most don’t have Krista’s best interests at heart, but she knows how to take care of herself—now better than ever. Holloway’s futuristic thriller mixes familiar elements of SF and crime fiction to tell a tale of ambition, agency, and revenge. Krista’s story is one of survival told by multiple narrators (including herself, her father, Arkin, and others) in a fast-paced novel that never lets up as she faces new challenges and enemies. Krista and O’Connell are the most well-developed characters among many, with both having survived past trauma; the two effectively bond in a relationship that’s very much like that of a parent and child. The villainy of the antagonists feels a bit over-the-top at times, but the author’s intriguing take on the development of artificial intelligence is a welcome bonus.
An action-packed techno-thriller with a fierce protagonist.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-4824373-9-1
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly...
In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility.
As Jonas approaches the "Ceremony of Twelve," he wonders what his adult "Assignment" will be. Father, a "Nurturer," cares for "newchildren"; Mother works in the "Department of Justice"; but Jonas's admitted talents suggest no particular calling. In the event, he is named "Receiver," to replace an Elder with a unique function: holding the community's memories—painful, troubling, or prone to lead (like love) to disorder; the Elder ("The Giver") now begins to transfer these memories to Jonas. The process is deeply disturbing; for the first time, Jonas learns about ordinary things like color, the sun, snow, and mountains, as well as love, war, and death: the ceremony known as "release" is revealed to be murder. Horrified, Jonas plots escape to "Elsewhere," a step he believes will return the memories to all the people, but his timing is upset by a decision to release a newchild he has come to love. Ill-equipped, Jonas sets out with the baby on a desperate journey whose enigmatic conclusion resonates with allegory: Jonas may be a Christ figure, but the contrasts here with Christian symbols are also intriguing.
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly provocative novel. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 978-0-395-64566-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
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