A sprightly, personable cast breathes life into this somewhat static futuristic mystery.
Cybernetically enhanced and genetically modified dogs investigate crimes aboard a space station in Gephardt’s debut novel and SF series launch.
Wolf-sized dog Rex Dieter-Nel and the members of his now-split Pack are each paired with a human/detective partner as part of the XK9 Project. All the XK9s live and work in Orangeboro on the Rana Station in deep space. Rex can communicate with humans thanks to his collar-mounted vocalizer, and the brain link between him and his warmhearted partner, Charlie Morgan, gives them a telepathic connection. When a suspicious death leads these partners to a docking bay, an exploding spaceship leaves Charlie seriously injured. A veritable alphabet soup of agencies scrutinizes the explosion and debris, including XK9 team Shady Jacob-Belle (Rex’s mate) and Detective Pam Gómez (Charlie’s ex). Rex noses around as well all on his own and sniffs out a crucial clue. But when he tries to get this evidence to the Orangeboro Police Department chief, he stumbles onto another mystery altogether—one related to the extensive training he and his Packmates underwent for years. Gephardt excels at developing the canine characters, particularly Rex and Shady: The two worry about what their respective partners think of them, lament their forced separation, and selflessly consider others (“I want to smell him all over from head to foot, as thoroughly as possible. I need to know that he will be all right”). The XK9s form a delightfully skilled bunch; Rex has an impeccable sniffer, Shady is multilingual, and other Packmates are explosives experts. The lengthy narrative also occasionally spotlights a cyberbeing and another human-like species; they support the prominent theme of sapience, as XK9s wish to be deemed sapient beings on par with humans. In fact, the full-bodied cast, virtually overshadows the main plot; characters talk more than they act as the investigation slowly progresses. Still, the XK9s prove irresistible as they display more familiar canine traits, from expressing heartache with howls to endlessly wagging tails and always being ready for food.
A sprightly, personable cast breathes life into this somewhat static futuristic mystery.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781950748037
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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