A gritty story of a tough boy in a bad situation, weighed down by its competing genres.
In Grey-Sun’s (Broken Angels, 2012) novel set in an ambiguously dark future, a high school wrestler deals with girl problems, bullies and intense visions.
After attending a wild party, Robert, a quiet but tough high school wrestler, finds himself in an increasingly large mess. His girlfriend, Leigh, is upset that he went to the party without her, and he tries to think of ways to make it up to her. Plus, upon leaving the party, he finds his best friend, Davin, passed out in the snow. As Davin recovers in the hospital, Robert has no one to talk to about his problems with Leigh—or about the strange things he’s been seeing lately: living snowmen, bodies stripped of their skin, his own hair removing itself from his head in a whirlwind of color. He suspects that they’re hallucinations brought on by his strangely strong acne medication, and these visions will likely be just as mystifying for readers. The story takes place in an alternate or near-future America in which the president has been murdered by the first lady, resulting in heightened security around the country. Robert also lives in a deeply intolerant part of Virginia, where race issues between black students and white students are magnified; Robert is black and Leigh is white, which means they have to keep their relationship secret. When Robert’s visions start to affect his wrestling performance, he’s hit with jeers from both his white and black teammates. Three types of stories seem to be competing here—fantasy, realism and dystopia—with little connection among them, which may strike readers as overly ambitious and confusing. As a result, the story might have been better served by either developing the relationships among the separate plotlines or by taking one approach—the realistic elements here are the strongest—and focusing on that single aspect of Robert’s life.
A gritty story of a tough boy in a bad situation, weighed down by its competing genres.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 160
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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