Edward makes Dan Brown look like Shakespeare. And that’s a powerful bit of conjuring indeed.
There’s no psychic powerful enough to ferret out where celebrity medium Edward mislaid his writing talent, but it certainly isn’t in this flaccid suspense novel.
One wants to like, even praise, a novel in which both Adolf Hitler and John Travolta figure. Alas, the mere names are the best part of the ploy. Here’s the opening line, at which the heart sinks: “Ten-year-old Charlene St. John glanced at the clock.” As well she might, since dad’s not home yet, and it’s near six. Dad’s from Scotland, and so, naturally enough, he says things like, “If men like me dinna screw in the bolts and tighten the nuts, the ship would come apart and sink to the bottom of the sea.” Well, give her all she’s got or no, and the fact remains that Scotty is just one of many people—everyone on the planet, really—who are entangled with some very weird events that, as the pope tells an assembly of stereotype-perfect world religious leaders, “taken together indicate the possibility of malevolent forces at work.” Enter ace scientist Jason Chang, who tells the president of the United States (POTUS, throughout most of the yarn, presumably to save on typing wear and tear) that “what we at NASA have been calling Dark Matter has appeared from nowhere—or, more correctly from a point near galaxy cluster Abell 2744.” Astronomy buffs may know that Abell 2744 is called Pandora’s Cluster because of its curious properties, among them heretofore not having been the ability to conjure up forces of evil so bad that even the aforementioned Hitler (or, as POTUS endearingly calls him, “perverted piece of shit”) hasn’t sided with them. Can the world be saved from Dark Matter and the Dark Overlords? By a few pages in, only John Travolta, jetting his way over a ravaged land, might be moved to care, while those who prize good writing will pray for the end days—or at least the end of this grinding tale.
Edward makes Dan Brown look like Shakespeare. And that’s a powerful bit of conjuring indeed.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3271-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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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