An exhilarating entry in a thoroughly enjoyable series.
In Padgett’s (A Heritage of Death, 2018, etc.) latest series installment, a reverend finds herself embroiled in an international criminal organization’s nefarious plot.
All that the Rev. Cici Gurule wants is a pleasant, two-day vacation hiking in Chaco Canyon National Park in New Mexico. Instead, she stumbles upon two armed men threatening a third. She manages to stay hidden from them, but as she tries to silently sprint back to her car, she hears gunshots, and the aforementioned third man hops into her Subaru with her. He says his name is Anton Vasiliev and that he’s a spy for an agency whose name he won’t reveal. He also divulges little information about the people who are chasing them, but he says that an international crime syndicate has a complicated scheme in the works involving a stolen Chacoan Native American artifact. Anton is skilled in combat, and Cici has the know-how to survive the harsh New Mexico environment—which includes a puma encounter when she and Anton are fleeing on foot. She also communicates with the spirit of her late twin sister, Anna Carmen, who the reverend believes can help her. Meanwhile, Cici’s friend and potential love interest, Detective Sam Chastain, joins authorities as they try to thwart the syndicate—and hopefully save Cici, as well. Although the preceding books in Padgett’s series are straightforward murder mysteries, this third installment is more of an action-packed thriller. The author kicks the story off with impressive momentum and later introduces further gunfights, explosions, and sometimes-dangerous weather. The prose is also sublimely concise: “Her fingers tensed, aching with effort as she slid backward. She scrabbled for purchase, wincing at the tug of pain in her knee.” In between action scenes, Padgett fleshes out her characters, building sympathy for the initially cold Anton and romantic tension between Cici and Sam. Readers who are new to the series will easily be able to follow the narrative, and they may be inclined to check out earlier, as well as future, installments.
An exhilarating entry in a thoroughly enjoyable series.Pub Date: May 21, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Sidecar Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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