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ALBERT OF ADELAIDE

Name: ALBERT OF ADELAIDE
Author: Howard Anderson
ISBN: 978-1-4555-0962-1

by Howard Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 10, 2012

A novel that tests the reader’s patience for animal whimsy and elaborate fables.

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There are no human characters in this debut novel of fantasy and allegory that will leave some readers wondering what the point of it is.

The novel reads like Siddhartha transplanted to the Australian outback. Or like Lonesome Dove recast for a platypus, wombats and dingoes. Or like the novelization of a Pixar animated feature with way more blood and alcohol than usual. The titular protagonist is a duck-billed platypus who, having escaped from the Adelaide Zoo, wanders into the desert, having “no idea where he was going, or exactly what he was looking for.” He had a vague idea of a destination, “somewhere in the desert…a place where old Australia still existed…keep going north…the Promised Land.” The narrator continues: “Those descriptions had sounded good in Adelaide, but they were worthless in a desert where every direction looked the same.” Before long, Albert finds company in Jack, a wombat who has more experience in the ways of the desert, and who tends to fight fire (and everything else) with fire. The two end up in a bar, one that could have been from any Western, except everyone there is an animal, and none of these animals had ever seen a platypus in the desert. Albert, whose natural habitat is water, thus has his first encounter with a different strain of prejudice: “At the zoo, Albert had been an object of curiosity and ridicule. In Old Australia he found himself an object of hate and mistrust.” Trouble ensues, Jack and Albert split up, and Albert finds himself at the Gates of Hell (literally, there’s even a sign saying so), the target of a manhunt (er, platypus-hunt), the leader of a renegade posse of dingoes and the recipient of age-old wisdom such as, “A gun can get you into trouble and sometimes it can get you out of it.” And, “A good run is always better than a bad fight.”

A novel that tests the reader’s patience for animal whimsy and elaborate fables.

Pub Date: July 10, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-4555-0962-1

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Twelve

Review Posted Online: April 2, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012

Categories:

FANTASY | GENERAL FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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New York Times Bestseller

DEVOLUTION

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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Awards & Accolades

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Our Verdict

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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.