An amusing, somewhat peculiar story about secret government agencies, conspiracies and the bond of friendship formed in a...
In Outlaw’s illustrated YA/conspiracy novel, a cash-strapped college student befriends a young woman claiming to be a top-secret government spy on the run from the law.
College freshman Dylan Dighton assumes she will be having a much-needed relaxing, solitary weekend on campus during Thanksgiving break. After explaining that she can’t join her roommates on a trip because she needs to work at the local record store to earn money, Dylan decides to take a walk around the neighborhood, where she witnesses a car accident. A young woman named Holly springs from the wreckage and begs Dylan not to call the police, but sirens are already blazing in the distance. After Holly injures a campus security guard with some top-notch martial arts, Dylan agrees to shelter Holly for the night in her vacant dorm. After Dylan awakes in the morning, she discovers that Holly has fled the coop and nicked a few items on her way out. When they encounter each other at a coffee shop a few hours later, Holly tells Dylan that she’s part of a government agency so secret it has no name, and she has been trained in a program related to an executive order given by President Kennedy before he was assassinated. Meanwhile, Dylan lands in hot water with campus security for the injured security guard, and she begins to wonder just what her new “friend” has dragged her into. Featuring a series of comic-book-style illustrations that show the titular character and Dylan in various states of undress and distress, the book attempts to inject mild erotic tension and playful camaraderie into a 50-year-old conspiracy about devaluing the nation’s currency. What the storytelling lacks in nuance it makes up for with relentless, page-turning pace: “The hand that came to rest on her shoulder was firm, impressive, and direct, as was the voice that followed. ‘Dylan Dighton, can we have a word with you?’ Her head pivoted quickly, and she found herself staring at campus security.” Dylan and Holly’s story is far from clichéd, but its implausibility puts it into the realm of stylized action-adventure.
An amusing, somewhat peculiar story about secret government agencies, conspiracies and the bond of friendship formed in a crisis.Pub Date: July 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497493056
Page Count: 158
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 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
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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