Superbly crafted, exhilarating futuristic tale.
A man capable of transforming into a lethal beast seeks revenge against those responsible for his friends’ deaths in Stevens’ SF/thriller debut.
Ever since the attack on Earth seven years ago, former military strategist David has been training. He blames and has targeted certain individuals for the loss of two beloved friends. His current goal is to train with enigmatic Mr. Three, whom David can only contact by reaching Level 23 in arena combat. David rises in levels by winning arena matches on planet Xalapaz, as he’s a formidable fighter, even more so when he transforms into a Wendigo. He does, however, limit his transformations since he fears losing control. When a stranger offers to help David find one of his targets, he makes a deal, for which he’ll need to get his hands on Turnol, a dangerous substance. He and others form a ragtag crew that includes a swordsman in jailhouse isolation and a princess who’s been framed for murder. More often than not, David and his allies wind up in skirmishes that necessitate Wendigo transformations. All the while, David remains vengeance-minded, seemingly heedless of the innocent victims of his retribution. Stevens’ novel runs at full tilt and comprises copious planetary locales and backstory. He nevertheless grounds his electric narrative with familiar sights, as the myriad species that appear are predominantly anthropomorphized animals or animal hybrids. A Uanelin, for example, resembles “an elongated, four-meter-tall spider” while others sport tentacles, a scorpion tail, etc. The dense plot further entails Tempest, a group of soldiers on Earth that resists the regime of diabolical Enzo, who leads Hyperions (modified humans)—all have ties to David. As the story progresses, a few mysteries gradually unravel. But Stevens, who’s undoubtedly planning a follow-up, lets some questions linger.
Superbly crafted, exhilarating futuristic tale.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 213
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
At turns spooky and funny, with bits of inside baseball and a swimming pool’s worth of blood.
Hill, son of the master, turns in a near-perfect homage to Stephen King.
Arthur Oakes has problems. One is that his mom, a social justice warrior, has landed in the slammer for unintentional manslaughter. And he’s one of just three Black kids at an expensive college (in Maine, of course), an easy target. A local townie drug dealer extorts him into stealing rare books from the school’s library, including one bound in human skin. The unwilling donor of said skin turns up, and so do various sinister people, one reminiscent of Tolkien’s Gollum, another a hick who lives—well, sort of—to kill. Then there’s Colin Wren, whose grandfather collects things occult. As will happen, an excursion into that arcana conjures up the title character, a very evil dragon, who strikes an agreement with fine print requiring Arthur and his circle to provide him with a sacrifice every Easter. “It’s a bad idea to make a deal with them,” says Arthur, belatedly. “Language is one of their weapons…as much as the fire they breathe or the tail that can knock down a house.” King Sorrow roasts his first victims, and the years roll by, with Arthur becoming a medieval scholar (fittingly enough, with a critical scene set at King Arthur’s fortress at Tintagel), Colin a tech billionaire with Muskian undertones (“King Sorrow was a dragon, but Colin was some sort of dark sorcerer”), and others of their circle suffering from either messing with dragons or living in an America of despair. There’s never a dull moment, and though Hill’s yarn is very long, it’s full of twists and turns and, beg pardon, Easter eggs pointing to Kingly takes on politics, literature, and internet trolls (a meta MAGA remark comes from an online review of Arthur’s book on dragons: “i was up for a good book about finding magical sords and stabbing dragons and rescuing hot babes in chainmail panties but instead i got a lot of WOKE nonsense.…and UGH it just goes on and on, couldve been hundreds of pages shorter”).
At turns spooky and funny, with bits of inside baseball and a swimming pool’s worth of blood.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780062200600
Page Count: 896
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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