First of a much-hyped fantasy series. In Serendair, ex-whore Rhapsody flees an insistent and thoroughly unpleasant former client, only to encounter an enigmatic assassin enslaved by a F—dor, a primordial fire-demon. By swearing kinship with the assassin and renaming him Achmed the Snake, Rhapsody unwittingly frees him. Deeply suspicious of Rhapsody’s Namer magic, the new Achmed abducts and interrogates her. The infuriated F—dor, meanwhile, sends forth the Shing, a thousand-strong army of shadow-beings dedicated to hunting Achmed down. Rhapsody, Achmed, and Grunthor, Achmed’s gigantic warrior-sidekick, head for the Enchanted Forest’s Great Tree, Sagia, whose roots extend through space and time. As they clamber inside Sagia’s vast roots, Achmed explains that he and Grunthor are Bolg, hereditary enemies of the F—dor, whom they kill because the F—dor intend to wake the Primal Wyrm from its slumber deep inside the world, destroying everything in fire. Later, when they come upon the Wyrm, Rhapsody sings it into prolonged sleep. But to escape Sagia, they must pass through the fire at the world’s core, where each is remade: Rhapsody becomes stunningly beautiful (though unconscious of her beauty) and acquires a flaming sword; Grunthor gains the powers of the earth, while Achmed can clairvoyantly sense the path ahead. They emerge on the other side of the world, to learn that 1400 years have passed. Serendair has been destroyed, though immortal survivors have populated this new land. Achmed decides it’s time the Bolg had a king. But a malevolent spirit followed the colonists. Did the F—dor survive too? A well-worked-out backdrop of impressive depth and appeal, and there’s a reasonable if anticlimactic resolution. Despite the hype, though, newcomer Haydon’s still feeling her way. (First printing of 100,000)
Pub Date: Sept. 13, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-86752-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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