An engaging, time-jumping sequel that skillfully brings Nazi supernatural secrets into SF territory.
A teenage girl of the near future hailing from a remarkable family discovers that a half brother is part of an incredible cyber/psychic experiment, providing a literal window into an ancestor’s World War II years.
Dustin offers a YA-skewed follow-up to her techno-thriller Artima’s Travels (2020). Erstwhile hero Artima “Arty” Ressols is a single mom whose advanced sense of smell led her to clandestine computer operations involving fragrances, Navy intrigue, and Covid-19 fallout. Now, the narrative turns to her daughter, Ella, 17. Ella learns of the death of her long-estranged father and reconnects with that branch of the family tree, especially a half brother named Colton. Using deceit to escape Artima’s supervision, Ella ventures to California to meet Colton, and they become fast friends even though something about the boy strikes Ella as odd. In short order, Colton reveals that he is part of a project, via a shady agency called Recor, to enhance human intelligence and computer interfaces. Colton has a brain implant that effectively gives him encyclopedic data base knowledge and the proverbial photographic memory. Moreover, he demonstrates a talent for psychometry—touching an object, he mentally divines details of its history. Family relics and a neural link to a Recor handheld screen device (looking much like a smartphone) take Ella and Colton back to World War II and their ancestor Albert. He is a rising engineer, and, while no Hitler follower, he finds himself forced unwillingly to work in the Third Reich’s secret weapons factories. When he shows psychic abilities during the testing of a V2 rocket, a personal visit from Heinrich Himmler inducts Albert into the SS elite seeking to weaponize psi phenomena and the occult via microwaves. Albert is shocked that among the “subhuman” concentration-camp inmates used in cruel experiments is Simon Silverstein, a Jewish friend from his younger days. Back in the 21st century, revelations that Colton’s enhancements may have been extrapolated from Nazi research throws Ella’s newfound relatives into a more sinister light.
The YA-leaning tone does not simplify the SF narrative, but it clearly keeps the tale out of R-rated territory when it comes to delineating grisly Holocaust atrocities (the previous book, sort of a workplace suspense drama, expressed adult concerns, though also with taste and decorum). Here, the storytelling neatly incorporates fact-based information on German research at the pioneering missile base at Peenemünde, mystical secret societies, the “Lebensborn” Aryan-breeding compounds, and some dubious quasi-science “achievements” of the Soviet Union and the United States. Dustin fact-checks herself in an afterword, and it is indeed shudderworthy to discover how much of this yarn has roots in the truth. The chronological leaps into different timelines at uneven intervals give the story a slightly choppy effect, but the voice is still a strong and effective one. The author thankfully does not fall back on the YA paranormal cliché of a female lead trapped in a maddening romantic dilemma. Another installment featuring these intriguing characters is promised at the end.
An engaging, time-jumping sequel that skillfully brings Nazi supernatural secrets into SF territory.Pub Date: May 7, 2022
ISBN: 979-8800202540
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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