A thought-provoking and satisfying story about modern man’s powers and limitations.
A single father encounters an eccentric billionaire who’s attempting to bring back an extinct species in Rich’s hard–SF novel.
Widower and botanist Muir O’Brien discovers a rare fern while hunting in the wilds of Oregon—so rare, in fact, that it was believed to have disappeared forever during the last ice age. He finds it on the property of a mysterious company called Arcadia, which occupies a lot of otherwise uninhabited countryside. The person behind Arcadia is Leo Bonelli, the richest man on Earth and the mind behind the world’s largest biotech company, SynBioData. He’s often accused of playing God, and his newest endeavors may just prove his critics right—as they “would allow not only the prevention of disease through the elimination of the genetic mutations that cause it, but the creation and reshaping of life itself.” Leo takes an interest in Muir, letting him in on some of his plans for his 10,000-square-mile “experiment in biodiversity” in the Oregon high desert. But Muir soon realizes that Leo plans to do something that no one sees coming: resurrect humankind’s extinct cousin, the Neanderthal. It’s a plan that will have far-reaching consequences in the lives of Muir and his daughter, Lilith. Rich’s prose is smooth and measured, laying out the particulars of scientific theory in minute detail, and he does the same for his characters’ surroundings: “Instead of a window, [Muir’s] desk faced a wall of shelves covered with scores of small pots, each of which nurtured the seedling of a de-extincted Paleolithic plant.” With its mix of cutting-edge science and moral quandaries, readers will find that the book reminds them at times of the work of the late bestselling author Michael Crichton. However, the thriller element of this novel is relatively muted to allow for a deeper examination of the characters and their relationships. Although the novel ends up in a place that some will find predictable, it’s still a highly readable and timely riff on the Frankenstein theme.
A thought-provoking and satisfying story about modern man’s powers and limitations.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Vector Books LLC
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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