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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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