A spirited and enjoyably droll supernatural romp.
A vampire agent makes the startling decision to join the bad guys in this sixth installment of a paranormal series.
Samuel Johnson, as an agent of Vampires Against The Evil, protects people from human-killing “true vampires.” But convinced his recent assignments were intentionally deadly, disgruntled employee Samuel murders his boss. He then makes a switch, aligning himself with a small group of true-vampire assassins. As it happens, these vamps already have a scheme underway against the local Des Moines, Iowa, chapters of “human-lover” organizations (including VATE). They plan to kill these groups’ leaders—like, say, Samuel’s dead boss. The goal is for the true vampires to reign supreme, at least in Iowa. But even among Samuel’s sinister new pals, there’s a slew of organizations, each with differing agendas. Some want to remain anonymous to humanity while others would prefer to enslave humans. Samuel has his work cut out for him—he helps assassinate human-lover leaders while investigating these murders under the pretense of being a VATE agent in good standing. But even if he’s truly turned to the dark side, he fights to ensure the bad blood among vampire groups doesn’t turn into an all-out war. Carpenter excels at developing an increasingly complex plot. It involves countless acronyms and characters, which he masterfully keeps in check. Samuel’s perpetual arrogance saturates his tongue-in-cheek, first-person narration. Even when he’s in apparent peril, he’s so blasé that there’s no real suspense. For example, he lists his options for combating a feral bloodsucker; what he chooses “is obvious to any vampire and should be to even the most stupid of humans.” Still, there’s plenty of rousing vampire-on-vampire action. And the question of whether or not Samuel is genuinely evil remains a mystery until late in the story. The ending, as in earlier volumes, paves the way for another installment.
A spirited and enjoyably droll supernatural romp.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-66-370507-3
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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