A gritty, unbalanced work that has its head in the stars but its feet firmly on 21st-century Earth.
In Lambright’s debut war novel, the future is revealed to be just as violent as the past as Paul Thompson battles insurgents—not to mention his own combat trauma—on a faraway colony planet in the 24th century.
Paul is an armored infantry officer on Juneau 3, one of the countless worlds inhabited by humans after the mass exodus to the stars that began in the mid-21st century after the invention of the Glimmer drive. No native intelligent life exists on any of the colony worlds; however, the Pan-American forces are still needed to quell the dissident activity that seems to pop up on nearly every planet, no matter how remote. Paul’s current assignment, his third combat rotation, is so far turning out to be his most intense yet. The Baradna Valley, which some readers may see as comparable to desolate Afghanistan, is full of action that keeps Paul and his team on their toes—in fact, even with the military’s modern technology, which includes armored combat suits and digital halos that connect soldiers in the blink of an eye, Paul is experiencing stress levels that are approaching unhealthy. Nevertheless, not wanting to let his team down, he continues to go out on deadly missions while reminiscing about the path that led him to Juneau 3, changing his life forever. Although Lambright, who is a veteran, provides detailed insight into the realities of being in combat, the novel’s 24th-century setting is somewhat awkward. Paul fights Pashtun, Bedouin and Tuareg insurgents in the deserts of alien planets that are almost exact replicas of certain areas of Earth; the sense that current-day issues have been simply copied and pasted onto another century and planet is overwhelming. The lack of a cohesive plot is also problematic. If the story were slower and more introspective, delving deeper into Paul’s mental and emotional states, then the lack of a traditional story structure might work a bit better. But Lambright doesn’t quite dig deep enough, resulting in a novel that always feels like it’s finally building up to the big event yet never does.
A gritty, unbalanced work that has its head in the stars but its feet firmly on 21st-century Earth.Pub Date: June 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499307061
Page Count: 334
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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