by G.W. Olson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2022
A well-written and compelling SF novel, with an older, wiser, battle-hardened hero.
Earth maintains an uneasy peace pact with an alien race in Olson’s SF novel.
Mikail Benson remembers the war with the AranthChi well; it still haunts his sleep (“In his worst dreams, the dead floated in the void with him, close enough to touch, too late to help”). The long conflict saw much suffering and many lives lost…and its end was just as much of a surprise as its beginning. After years of bloodshed, the alien race suddenly wanted to talk of peace, and of working together to share information and technology. Mikail found himself no longer a soldier—now he runs the Office of Alien Technologies, reviewing the questions and answers that go from humans to AranthChi and back. Despite what so many others seem to think, Mikail is not convinced peace will last, even 36 years later. It turns out he’s right: Marsh(ee), the alpha male of Least Clan of the AranthChi, uses the fact that he is far enough out in Aranth-run space (and all but forgotten) to wage a “faux war with humanity.” Just as Mikail uncovers evidence of the AranthChi treachery and begins to formulate a plan, the aliens’ High Council of Great Clans learns of Marsh(ee)’s planned revolt and alerts their ships to plan to attack the humans in retaliation for aiding a traitor. Mikail might be too late to save humanity—if they couldn’t defeat a small fraction of the AranthChi forces years ago, what hope do they have against the whole fleet? In this riveting SF yarn, readers are treated to diabolical political plots and a thrilling race to save the world as we know it. Even with the human characters evolved to enjoy longer lifespans, it’s enjoyable to see an older hero in an adventure story (Mikail is 70). His experience in the war still affects him emotionally, giving his character a level of depth that feels utterly genuine and admirable.
A well-written and compelling SF novel, with an older, wiser, battle-hardened hero.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Belle Isle Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Max Brooks
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Keanu Reeves & China Miéville ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 23, 2024
A well-written if elusive treat for fans of modern mythologizing.
In which the Angel of Death really wants to take a holiday.
“Memory is a labyrinth.” Or perhaps a matrix. Actor Reeves teams up with speculative fictionist Miéville to produce a tale that definitely falls into the latter’s “weird fiction” subgenre. The chief protagonist is the demi-divine Unute, known as B. He’s not nice: “That man does not kill children anymore, when he can avoid doing so, but still, leave him alone,” warns one of the narrators, whose threads of story are distinguished by different typefaces. B is a killer—early on, he explains to a psychiatrist, “I kill and kill and kill again,” adding that he’d really rather be doing something else. B is also curious about the way things work, which leads him to experiment on unfortunate deer-pigs, the babirusa of Indonesia, to try to suss out what allows him to die but then come back to life, learning that he’s not so much immortal as “infinitely mortal.” B, as one might imagine, isn’t the life of the party—and the reader will be forgiven for being a little grossed out by his experiments, which are infinitely grisly (“A gush of cream- and rust-colored slime sopped out and across the gurney and onto the floor to mix with soapy water”). The structure of the story is both metaphorical (albeit B professes little patience with metaphor), with Unute morphing into Death itself, and rather loose, the plot picking up hints dropped earlier. It’s not always easy to follow, but it’s clear that Reeves and Miéville are having fun with the tale and its often playful, even poetic language (“the huff-huff of horny hard feet on the scuffed corporate carpet, a stepping closer, an incoming, a meeting about to be”).
A well-written if elusive treat for fans of modern mythologizing.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593446591
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
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