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
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
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