An apt beach read about Aquatics, even if the slam-bang heroics go over the top.
As global warming threatens Earth, human scientists encounter an incredible race of sea people who offer help in reversing environmental disaster—but an equally ancient enemy also resurfaces.
This debut novel’s conceit is that all of humanity’s mythology about undersea folk—mermen, King Neptune, and the like—is true. The same microbe-laden meteorite that seeds life on Earth initially brings forth a race of scaly, humanoid “Aquatics,” who settle in the Atlantic and Pacific. Amazingly long-lived and almost godlike in their sufficiently advanced science that’s indistinguishable from magic, Aquatics safeguard the planet’s progress for eons (minimizing harm caused by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, for example). A pair of them adapts under duress to terrestrial life, evolving into Homo sapiens. Finally, the Aquatics emerge from their polar hiding place to confront mankind in 2037 because of one problem they can’t handle alone: climate change. Though land dwellers have switched to cold fusion (and settled international conflicts via a one-world government), unhealthy carbon emissions have raised sea levels and greenhouse gases to extinction levels. King Kronos of the Aquatics asks the cooperation of Dr. Nova Zorian of the floating lab complex Sea City to coordinate a joint operation to restore balance to the atmosphere. But Hyperion, an ancient Aquatic banished because of his villainy, who has infiltrated elite human society, uses the crisis to make his ultimate grab for power. This novel may be Al Gore–worthy in its trendy concern about 21st-century global warming, but its heart belongs to the sci-fi fantasy pulps and funny pages of earlier eras, when manly men laughed at danger, lady scientists turned out to be beautiful, and bad guys cackled insanely. As marine beings undergo painful adaptations and DNA mutations out of the water, there might have been a chance here for a sci-fi riff on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” but, alas, that doesn’t happen. Instead, Nolan offers plenty of action and monsters/mutants (shark women and octopus-wolves, among others). The tale’s climactic battle seems to owe more to Marvel Comics’ Jack Kirby than to the Mediterranean lore of the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians.
An apt beach read about Aquatics, even if the slam-bang heroics go over the top.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5033-0449-9
Page Count: 316
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
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
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