Both scary science fiction and a bleak nightmare about the end of democracy.
Kalfař, who moved to the United States from the Czech Republic when he was 15, incorporates both countries in this dystopian story about a Czech woman whose search for her long-lost daughter in 2029 America quickly becomes a techno-mystery about life beyond physical death.
Learning she has a fatal disease, Adéla Slavíková procures a 10-day visa to America to find Tereza, the daughter she gave up for adoption as an infant. Unfortunately, America—now ruled by former Republicans who have formed the Reclamation Party under an unnamed former Florida governor’s leadership—now exemplifies a world that, having been buffeted by natural and political disasters, has deteriorated into “global fascism.” Tereza works for VITA, a bioengineering corporation run by twin masterminds (a fictional double whammy of Elon Musk). Adéla does locate Tereza, and they spend one joyous day together. But that night Adéla dies in her hotel room, at least physically. Unbodied, she continues to narrate her attempt to adjust to what she assumes is death. She lacks sensations, like smell, but she can mentally travel at will. So her consciousness veers between observing her current situation and reliving the late 1980s, when she came to the U.S. for the first time with high hopes for a better life. When her ambitions and love life faltered, she returned to Czechoslovakia pregnant—and now she is drawn yet resistant to nostalgia over the romantic but ultimately disappointing American interlude. Meanwhile, she observes as her Czech son, Roman, who's struggling with his own demons, joins forces with Tereza to search for their mother’s now-missing body. Their dangerous trek into a world where greed and tribal loyalty trump ethics carries them to VITA’s secret facilities in climate-ravaged Florida, where things get too weird to explain. Kalfař brings his characters to life with almost formal eloquence. Although he tends to overstate and repeat his moral condemnations, he makes the potential power of technology and artificial intelligence a frightening prospect.
Both scary science fiction and a bleak nightmare about the end of democracy.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-316-46318-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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