A compelling, thrilling SF yarn.
A young woman has to relearn how to survive and thrive after being cured of a deadly, zombielike virus in Ramsay’s novel.
CeCe Campbell wakes up confused and in pain, with her father, Shawn, by her side. The last thing she remembers is celebrating her 18th birthday with her friends; her father drops the bombshell that two years have passed since then. CeCe has been infected with the Kill Virus, which essentially makes people into zombielike creatures. Shawn managed to find a cure, and CeCe was his first priority. After months of healing and therapy, CeCe is ready to leave the makeshift hospital that has been set up to rehab the recently Cured. This means she has to face the devastated outside world, which is very different from what she remembers. Trying to return to some semblance of normalcy, CeCe starts taking GED classes at the recently reopened school, but even that is a rough go; there is another student, Olivia, who is part of a religious cult that sees the virus as God’s plan to eradicate the evil people on Earth and hates the Cured. But there is a bright spot in CeCe’s life: Derrick, another person who has beaten the virus and is finding his way in the world. While CeCe enjoys spending time with him, she has a secret—she knows Derrick is the one who infected her, but how can she tell him and burden him with guilt? In this speculative tale, Ramsay delivers a narrative that is darker than its title may suggest. The virus-decimated landscape (“storefront windows busted out, puddles of dried blood on the sidewalks, smoke billowing in the distance, and the abandoned houses on her street”) highlights the author’s skill at worldbuilding; physical descriptions of the characters may be few and far between, but each is distinct in attitude and action. The story, coming in at around 160 pages, moves briskly—readers will be entranced the whole way through.
A compelling, thrilling SF yarn.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781957295824
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Boroughs Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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