Partisan power grabs and sea monsters swirl in this engaging, adrenaline-charged cli-fi tale.
In a near future wracked by climate chaos, a ruined United States faces the threats of a brutish military government and a new, genetically modified species of predators.
Fullilove forecasts a dire near future in this cli-fi dystopian novel. Global warming and melting ice caps in the mid-21st century have led to land masses suddenly submerging while sea levels pitilessly rise under pounding superstorms and serial hurricanes. Cuba, New York state, Florida, and California drown. In Washington, D.C., the climate change–denying Republican government —laden with racist, religious conservatives—is overthrown by rogue general Cody Freeman, who secretly took environmental predictions seriously. Freeman institutes a secret plan called Project Overlord, replacing do-nothing Washington politicians with a harsh military police/prison state. New “detention centers” sprout everywhere; millions of refugees are killed outright (with a special emphasis on minorities); and the U.S. capital moves to Cleveland. America’s nuclear weapons go on high alert against foes Russia and China. Regarding China, a 2019 flashback shows Victor Frankenstein–esque scientists gene-splicing endangered polar bears to enable them to survive the altered environment, with increased intelligence, size, and teeth. Now, these “mogli” creatures are ubiquitous, amphibious alpha predators. The backstory is delivered in a mosaic of flashbacks while, in the present, a multiethnic Overlord troubleshooting team is led by an attractive, deadly Cuban American ex-cop named Madison Cervantes. Badass survivors of incarcerations, rapes, ethnic cleansings, and mogli maraudings, the squad undertakes suicidal salvage missions to stabilize the crumbling nation’s economy and infrastructure. The author’s typhoon-force storytelling chops do not quite propel this series opener all the way through. But the prose will often keep eyeballs riveted, though an ending leaves much dangling for the sequel. Category 5 racial pathologies (echoing Hurricane Katrina and George Floyd) tinge the disaster stuff while the eco-preaching, if not exactly muted, still takes a back seat to slam-bang action. The monsters make a nostalgic throwback to those beasts-on-the-loose thrillers published in the wake of Peter Benchley’s Jaws. Yet Fullilove’s big, juicy question is whether Freeman really is a foul villain (He makes “Hitler look like an innocent schoolboy!”) or a tragic, pragmatic strongman, prepared to sacrifice himself to save a shattered homeland. Cli-fi fans will be tempted to read the over-the-top story in one sitting.
Partisan power grabs and sea monsters swirl in this engaging, adrenaline-charged cli-fi tale.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781639889617
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
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
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
