A fevered post-apocalyptic yarn heavier on philosophical meanderings than survivalist thrills.
The apparent sole human remaining in a future western America depopulated by war, plague, and eco-collapse comes across the writings of a fellow survivor in Koszulinski’s SF novel.
Jane Ballard, born in 2055, is the lonely survivor of an apocalyptic dystopia beset by climate horror, famine, genocide, and war. She’s a Marine Corps veteran of the secessionist California Republic of some 15 liberal-minded states—they were supposedly the good guys, but Jane understands that propaganda was rampant, so who knows? Also rampant: a mysterious contagion, Virus (x), which delivered the final blow, wiping out almost every human on Earth, plus dogs and cats. Jane wanders the West, seeking others still alive. In Arizona, she discovers “Dead Man”—the mummified corpse of a former U.S. government “archeopsychic extractor” (torturer) who evidently walked unprotected into the daytime heat to expire. Dead Man’s journals and hideaway in a book-filled disused motel send Jane into reveries about civilization’s ultimate downfall, when “the feed” (read: internet) extirpated words on paper in favor of an ever-changing, AI-dominated miasma of illusion, fake-news hoaxes, and alienating virtual sex (even bisexual Jane partook), undermining the basics of humanity. (“It was not Virus (x) or the endless ecological perils, it was the dissolution of a shared reality that brought about collapse.”) Dead Man’s ghostly diatribes haunt Jane, even after she stumbles on tangible evidence in Taos of other holdouts. With a wobbly back-and-forth chronology and breakaway asides, the narrative feels more manifestolike than other dire post-holocaust Robinsonades and examples of “prepper” fiction. The text employs almost-experimental free verse (“Transformation, transformation, transformation. We are not the wardens. War crimes end-of-times? We are the shepherds leading the sheep on the path of enlightenment. Touch the light with your burning bodies”) to ruminate on religion, guilt, machine-intelligence limitations, wealth inequality, habitat loss, and the overarching need for community. The tale is by turns provocative and frustrating as its hero pursues her foggy goal.
A fevered post-apocalyptic yarn heavier on philosophical meanderings than survivalist thrills.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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