A well-told hard-sci-fi yarn of otherworldly jeopardy and ancient aliens that turns uncharacteristically mystical-minded in...
In this debut sci-fi thriller, a World Health Organization agent, while investigating a frightening new plague in the South Pacific, discovers an ancient extraterrestrial force that could advance all terrestrial life—or destroy it.
Author Lentz’s compact, fine-tuned narrative begins as WHO operative Colin Grier is ordered to confront an outbreak of a frightening new plague in New Guinea. Degrading and mutating plant and animal life alike, the disease seems to emanate from a portentous, disc-shaped silver object, embedded, along with other anachronisms, in 2-million-year-old limestone beneath a Khmer temple. Moreover, in a somewhat spiritual note, the contagion appears to affect morally different people in different ways; inherently “evil” ones mutate into loathsome, pustule-covered maniacs, while “good” ones suffer dangerous paralysis but develop increased intellects, clairvoyance, and telepathy. With a strike force just hours away from quarantining the site permanently, Grier, a beautiful girl named Margo, and a handful of enlightened scientist-mystics must solve the enigma of the device and, if possible, discover the nature of alien intelligences who created it. Lentz never uses the acronym for the World Health Organization, WHO, but elements of the British sci-fi TV series Doctor Who would be quite apt here. Outbursts of Grand Guignol gore, Dan Brown–esque action, and Michael Crichton–style hard-science charts and statistics yield in the final act to a climax not unlike that of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The book effectively jettisons the usual genre-fiction notions of tidy denouements and happily-ever-afters to take its characters into a surreal realm of infinite possibilities, rebooting human history without all the mess-ups. It’s up to the reader whether this takes the sturdy plot off the rails—or if there never were any rails.
A well-told hard-sci-fi yarn of otherworldly jeopardy and ancient aliens that turns uncharacteristically mystical-minded in the end.Pub Date: March 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4697-8284-3
Page Count: 252
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2015
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
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
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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