Strong worldbuilding and characters ground an imaginative setting, creating a powerful series opener.
Death is neither the end of existence nor the beginning of clarity for a grieving widower who finds himself in a mysterious near utopia in this debut novel.
Marlin Hadder is dead and not particularly liking it. After a dreamlike encounter in which he seemingly repudiates a peaceful meeting with a “painfully beautiful” and powerful “iridescent figure” because of the Rage, a lifelong anger that he struggles to control, Hadder ends up in a city called Station, in a decrepit bar with the same name. The city is a marvel: All labor is done by humanoid manikins, and there are numerous entertainments and no aging or sickness. It seems like paradise, but Hadder has some key questions (“Could this strange city really prove a new beginning? Could it make him finally forget his old life that was lost in the wreckage? Is that what he needed? Is that what he really wanted?”). Several residents have queries of their own. The more he explores, the more he questions, especially regarding the enigmatic Creator of the city, Mister Rott, and the beings on the other side of Station’s border. Early writes with economy and punch, creating an unusual world with specificity and color while permitting many aspects to go unexplained for the moment, allowing for more particulars or mystery as the story demands. Hadder and the other humans of Station are painted in equally strong detail. Their strengths and flaws seem believable and lived in even as the stranger aspects of their reality—such as the lack of a sun, the inability to leave the city once one’s entered, even the nature of their continued existence—loom over the characters to various degrees, affecting their psychologies and philosophies in unexpected ways. Portraying a realm built from various pieces of the characters’ old world, the engrossing novel wears its numerous influences well, twirling aspects of Dante, Philip José Farmer, and Buddhist thought into the narrative without being ham-handed. Some readers may be surprised at where the last third of the book goes, given its tonal shift with respect to the previous pages, but this volume is only the first of a series. The author’s deft plotting and capable writing keep things together even while laying the groundwork for the tale’s continuation.
Strong worldbuilding and characters ground an imaginative setting, creating a powerful series opener.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73423-140-3
Page Count: 361
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2020
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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