A sometimes-entertaining but often turgid yarn that shows how dreary godlike technology can be.
A scientist deciphers the hidden structure of reality, learns how to control it, and lands in hot water in this SF fantasy.
After years of study, Roger Gregory—always referred to as “Mr. Gregory”—has finally discovered that at the foundation of the universe is the Network: an 11-dimensional web of nodes and connections through which energy and information flow. He’s invented a lens that allows him to peer into the Network, and an “information-processing paradigm” called “the Language of Inner Forced Evolution” that lets him predict the future from the flows—and sometimes even change it by shining photons into the Network. Using this machinery, which he keeps in his basement in Alexandria, Virginia, Mr. Gregory has made a fortune predicting stock market moves and has turned to do-gooding. He forecasts a megaquake in time to evacuate Los Angeles and a viral pandemic in time to develop a vaccine. He also conjures up a storm at sea that lets an American ship escape the Iranian navy, changes a little girl’s genetic code to cure her cancer, and rigs up a system to automatically predict and forestall conflicts, which results in world peace and plummeting homicide rates. Mr. Gregory isn’t shy about publicly claiming credit for these miracles, and the Pentagon starts pestering him to turn his inventions to morally dubious ends, such as performing mind control and giving terrorists fatal illnesses. Worse, when a sudden anomaly in the Network starts bombarding the world with earthquakes, tsunamis, plagues, and asteroids, irate mobs unfairly blame Mr. Gregory for the looming apocalypse. In Nahum’s ruminative story, Mr. Gregory’s gizmos are the functional equivalents of a crystal ball and magic wand. But the author’s gnarled novel of ideas focuses on making it all sound scientific with murky technical explanations—“If the informational imbalances that resulted in diseases in four dimensions could be addressed proactively within the higher dimensionality of the Network, they could be corrected before they became manifest in people’s local projection of them, and they would never occur in their lives”—that go on for many eye-glazing chapters. When Nahum leaves off the weird physics lectures and embroils Mr. Gregory in human plots and power plays, the author crafts some tense and engrossing scenes that indicate a more promising direction the book might have taken.
A sometimes-entertaining but often turgid yarn that shows how dreary godlike technology can be.Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4808-8897-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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