A visually powerful, angst-ridden and sometimes funny story set in a world of killer DJs and smuggled soul music.
In Gray’s sci-fi/fantasy debut, the highly stratified society of Overtone finds itself torn apart in a fight to channel the Ohm, a ubiquitous but tightly controlled energy source akin to electricity.
Like most young men, Flick dreams of being a Shaper, someone who can literally create new worlds by adeptly joining and mixing musical sounds. To see if he has this ability, he visits the Resident, the Shaper designator, who lives in the center of Overtone. The Resident says nothing significant at their first meeting, yet Flick comes to a much fuller understanding of the scope of his powers when an explosion upsets the flow of Ohm to the grid, unleashing tensions between the privileged people of the Inner Rings and the hardworking citizens of the Outer Rings. Flick begins a wildly imaginative journey that takes him through fights against far more powerful, embittered foes while exposing him to the heartbreak of hero worship and love from afar. Partly a coming-of-age story, partly a detailed exploration of the physics of music and sound waves, Gray’s novel features marvelous passages of sci-fi flight: “[Flick] examined the various shapes and sizes of the sound waves, the way the bold bass throes bounded forward like lumbering whales, or the way the high pitched screams frizzed up like dust motes on a kitchen floor. The tunnel of light and sound throbbed and shifted and echoed.” While the conceit of a world that operates entirely on sound waves and bootleg mixes wears slightly thin over the course of a full-length novel, the enthusiasm with which Gray writes often makes up for the occasionally heavy-handed allusions to a society engaged in class war. Flick’s culture shock and growing awareness of the disparities inherent in a tightly regulated caste system are interspersed with oversize, playful creatures that are half-organic, half-subwoofer. The novel suffers a bit from its worldbuilding; every one of the hero’s actions is colored with outré magnitude. Regardless, Gray’s ability to create a richly imagined universe will delight genre enthusiasts, and his skill bodes well for future efforts.
A visually powerful, angst-ridden and sometimes funny story set in a world of killer DJs and smuggled soul music.Pub Date: May 8, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ohm Press
Review Posted Online: July 21, 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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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