by Heath D. Alberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 2013
A feverish, demanding story that’s refreshingly new.
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Alberts (The Battery Man, 2013) envisions a bleak future in which the rich may legally buy the poor like cattle.
In 2068, life for average Americans has never been worse. Gun ownership is illegal, social safety nets are gone, and companies fire employees after a single offense. The desperate masses, in turn, can opt to sell themselves to facilities known as Arcologies. With large payments made to family members, individuals become the property of these towering structures, where, as 21st-century slaves, they exist and die at the pleasure of the superrich. Nothing is off-limits—sex, gladiatorial combat, organ donation, anything. Within the Shinu Arcology, near Chicago, lives a disparate group of enslaved people that includes Mitch, Lisa, Delano, Rick and Alex. Coping with their fates, they make heroic choices that help them succeed against the murderous Arcology. In an experiment, Mitch’s consciousness is transferred into the facility’s computer network. Elsewhere, Lisa is secretly sold as a fighter to a man named Malboq, from whom she learns that the Arcologies are run by the Shinjimori yakuza; he’d like her to help vanquish their global tyranny. But can this assortment of heroes foment revolution before the yakuza punish the rest of the world? Author Alberts brings tremendous energy, imagination and technological smarts to his sprawling narrative. He skilfully weaves multiple character threads into a robust, frightfully believable world. Readers will happily root for Alberts’ heroes since the villainy is so starkly presented; for example, one of the prison guards reminds Lisa, “You do what we want, when we want it, and you don’t ask questions. You’re not a person anymore. You’re a plaything; a pet.” In general, however, Alberts often uses descriptions with three words when one will suffice, so some passages take on a sheen that might exhaust readers, as when “she could no longer contain her own emotions in full, as a wellspring of tears began to fill behind the ineffective levees of her eyelids.” Nevertheless, this lurid, fascinating work will satisfy deep thinkers.
A feverish, demanding story that’s refreshingly new.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1493575084
Page Count: 576
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2014
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 Blake Crouch ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 26, 2016
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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