While the thematic impact falls short of its apocalyptic potential, this is still a dark page-turner of a read.
A near-future America is transformed into a lawless hellscape as global warming dispossesses hundreds of thousands of people in Willis’ speculative thriller.
In 2086, as the waters of the Atlantic continue to rise, swallowing up entire communities—including Jamestown, Virginia, where Marg Bernard and her family live—the housewife and mother is faced with a nightmarish situation. After her husband drowns attempting to prevent the visitors center where he works from flooding, Marg and her children (15-year-old Susan and 9-year-old Quentin) set out from their dilapidated house to seek sanctuary elsewhere. The journey quickly devolves into a horrifying struggle to survive, as they’re forced to live with a nomadic tent community, enduring frequent hurricanes and the quickly approaching winter while also steering clear of violent locals who are fearful of the influx of migrants into their towns (“We don’t cotton to those gypsies around here”). As Marg desperately tries to find a path that leads to some kind of stability for herself and her children, matters become even more complicated when a figure from her past—a mentally unstable man who sexually assaulted her years earlier—finds her and tries to reestablish what he perceived as love and intimacy with her again. The intensity and complexity of emotions animate the writing—hope and courage constantly do battle with fear, sadness, anger, and despair. The all-too-plausible setting is an obvious strength, as is the dynamic between Marg and her kids, but the narrative has some areas that could be improved. The conclusion is too abrupt and lacks a strong thematic takeaway. There are no enlightening revelations at the novel’s end, just a sense of the difficulty of surviving the horrors of life and finding some kind of happiness and meaning amid the chaos and brutality of existence. But that may very well be the point.
While the thematic impact falls short of its apocalyptic potential, this is still a dark page-turner of a read.Pub Date: April 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781960675811
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Authors' Tranquility Press
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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