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
Once again, a highly impressive must-read.
Second part of an alien-contact trilogy (The Three-Body Problem, 2014) from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In the previous book, the inhabitants of Trisolaris, a planet with three suns, discovered that their planet was doomed and that Earth offered a suitable refuge. So, determined to capture Earth and exterminate humanity, the Trisolarans embarked on a 400-year-long interstellar voyage and also sent sophons (enormously sophisticated computers constructed inside the curled-up dimensions of fundamental particles) to spy on humanity and impose an unbreakable block on scientific advance. On Earth, the Earth-Trisolaris Organization formed to help the invaders, despite knowing the inevitable outcome. Humanity’s lone advantage is that Trisolarans are incapable of lying or dissimulation and so cannot understand deceit or subterfuge. This time, with the Trisolarans a few years into their voyage, physicist Ye Wenjie (whose reminiscences drove much of the action in the last book) visits astronomer-turned-sociologist Luo Ji, urging him to develop her ideas on cosmic sociology. The Planetary Defense Council, meanwhile, in order to combat the powerful escapist movement (they want to build starships and flee so that at least some humans will survive), announces the Wallfacer Project. Four selected individuals will be accorded the power to command any resource in order to develop plans to defend Earth, while the details will remain hidden in the thoughts of each Wallfacer, where even the sophons can't reach. To combat this, the ETO creates Wallbreakers, dedicated to deducing and thwarting the plans of the Wallfacers. The chosen Wallfacers are soldier Frederick Tyler, diplomat Manuel Rey Diaz, neuroscientist Bill Hines, and—Luo Ji. Luo has no idea why he was chosen, but, nonetheless, the Trisolarans seem determined to kill him. The plot’s development centers on Liu’s dark and rather gloomy but highly persuasive philosophy, with dazzling ideas and an unsettling, nonlinear, almost nonnarrative structure that demands patience but offers huge rewards.
Once again, a highly impressive must-read.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7708-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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