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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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