Dive into this sweeping, romantic journey that will leave you breathless and a little unsure of where in time you’ve landed.
Four scientists receive a grant to study memory in the hope of finding a cure for Alzheimer’s and make the discovery of a lifetime—or lifetimes.
Womack's debut novel has many beginnings, but the crux of the story starts in 1982, when a research team led by Michael Backer develops an Alzheimer’s drug called Renovo that produces startling results. Michael, amazed by what his patients can now remember, begins to wonder what the drug might do for a healthy mind—and the story races off at an ever intensifying rate from there, building layer upon layer. Choices made in 1982 have ramifications in the present, and all comes to a head when Bryan Pierce, an artist who paints the extremely lifelike dreams he suffers from, meets Linz Jacobs, a brilliant scientist also troubled by a childhood dream, and is instantly drawn to her. More than that, he remembers her. But the recognition goes far beyond this life. As Bryan and Linz deepen their connection, it becomes clear their dreams are more akin to “remember[ing] an entire life”: they’ve fallen in love in ancient Egypt and ancient Rome; lived as Vikings and musicians and poets. But how does this connect to Renovo? And how can “the human psyche…process such information?” At times, the complex plot, which covers thousands of years of history when all is said and done, seems to rely on coincidence and circumstance to propel itself toward a conclusion; readers will just have to try their best to ignore this. Womack makes a romantic case for the existence of destiny, though, and does a beautiful job—especially in the slower-paced “recall” passages—of building emotional depth that can be achieved only by lovers unbound by time.
Dive into this sweeping, romantic journey that will leave you breathless and a little unsure of where in time you’ve landed.Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05303-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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