This novel’s offbeat narrative style and absorbing protagonist help to overcome its occasional missteps.
In Levin’s sci-fi debut, a young man in the 24th century travels through space and time, confronts aliens, and falls in love.
Being an Eisenstein is far from easy. For centuries, 16-year-old Michael’s scientist forbears created bigger and deadlier weapons of mass destruction. The American Isles, formerly known as the United States, has been devastated by world wars and melting polar ice caps over the years. Now, in 2378, its citizens believe that the government’s been lying for years about extraterrestrials living in underwater biospheres on Earth. Michael fears that his father, Benjamin, has knowledge of the aliens, and he also thinks that the government will soon expect him, Michael, to invent new weapons. Michael accompanies his father to what he presumes is a meeting about weapons development, but a trek into dark tunnels results in him being knocked unconscious. He awakens to meet Ezekial, a time traveler who takes him through a wormhole to another planet. There, Michael encounters people who see all Eisensteins as a menace, and some claim shared history with him that he doesn’t remember. Soon, evil beings are out for his blood, plotting an attack against Earth and threatening his girlfriend, Maya. Levin’s unorthodox tale begins as a series of diary entries in which Michael addresses readers in time-stamped sections interspersed with other characters’ perspectives. Familiar genre elements, such as teleportation, are coupled with less recognizable but equally chic ones, such as Michael’s newly “extended mind,” which gives him powers akin to telepathy. Levin grounds the tale by giving the protagonist an appreciation for ancient popular culture (including a reference to the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). Nevertheless, despite relatively minimal time travel, the story’s chronology gets confusingly jumbled. Fifteen years after the initial action, for example, the year is noted as 2378, then 2393, and later, 2387. Although this book reveals some things about Michael’s mysterious background, there remain myriad worlds to explore in planned subsequent volumes.
This novel’s offbeat narrative style and absorbing protagonist help to overcome its occasional missteps.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-1158-0
Page Count: 374
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2017
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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