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
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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