Queer Eye for star guys; an engaging throwback SF adventure with a strong gay affirmation.
Two male lovers fight for survival in a spacegoing future in which a nasty dictator oppresses and tortures gay men while secretly planning to exploit their psychic interconnections for galactic conquest.
Debut author Miller begins an SF series that’s waist-deep in the swashbuckling, space opera aesthetic. The saga is set in a far future in which humanity is spread across three galaxies. Yet instead of reaching pinnacles of achievement, much of humankind has become disconnected, forgetting Earth altogether and even falling backward instead of progressing. Such is especially the case for star systems dominated by the Senate, a vicious, reactionary dictatorship under usurper Alarius Kruger II, alias the Magistrate. Among his depredations: the systematic persecution and imprisonment of “sodbents,” gay men. It seems that gay Homo sapiens have evolved (or been somehow engineered) with psychic traits of ESP communication and mind control that transcend space and time. Committed “soulmate” men in relationships develop even deeper thought bonds, the fabled “Life-Lines” (and they make orgasms incredible). While publicly denouncing gays as “degens” and incarcerating them, the paranoid and megalomaniacal Magistrate insidiously seeks to exploit these psi superpowers inherent in the galaxy’s gays to rule the cosmos. Leading the resistance are a colorful space pirate named Farthing, a big, tough GMO supersoldier who rebelled (and is a “gentle giant” in bed); a witchlike but benevolent sisterhood called the Sirens; and Life-Line lovers Tam and Brogan. Light-years across the galaxy, in another long-lost segment of humanity vying to reunite the race, a gay man named Bennett detects Tam’s thoughts. Bennett, astounded by the youth’s latent psychic talents, also starts to play a part in the striking intrigues—which are, by the way, bereft of aliens here, gay or straight. The intriguing material sometimes walks a thin line between golden age SF sincerity and camp (especially the part about booby-trap bombs implanted in manly buttocks) but somehow never fully descends into self-parody, Rocky Horror Show–esque ridiculousness, and that is a bit of a feat. SF from a queer vantage point is rare, and while this action tale may skew nearer to Flash Gordon (or Barbarella) than Samuel R. Delany’s characters, the out-of-the-closet voice is a refreshing genre change of pace.
Queer Eye for star guys; an engaging throwback SF adventure with a strong gay affirmation.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781039146990
Page Count: 189
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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