For readers who get off on what-would-I-do? questions, this book offers satisfaction.
A doctor, her adolescent son and a trucker shelter and defend fellow survivors in the wake of a post-nuclear zombie apocalypse.
This second novel by Jacobs (Southern Gods, 2011) has all of the right elements of the bookshelf’s worth of zombie novels swarming the market in the wake of AMC’s The Walking Dead: zombies, blood, gore, terror and the gruesome mechanics of survival—but this bloody entry also offers something more in style, substance and readability. Lucy Ingersol is a doctor in a southern hospital when the world goes pear-shaped—walking, flesh-eating corpses accompanied by critical nuclear strikes in major American cities. Lucy and her son Gus survive with the help of Jim “Knock-Out” Nickerson, a burly, rough-looking truck driver with a surprisingly gentle nature. Over time, the trio and their followers build an armed fortress off of the Arkansas River, naming their home “Bridge City.” It’s rough business for the adolescent boy being groomed to lead them. “The murderhole is a twenty-by-twenty space between the inner and outer gates, ringed by a walkway about six feet above the ground and connected to the rampart. The zombie’s heads are right at our feet level,” explains Gus. “This was all my idea. Some days I’m not too happy about it.” The novel’s tenderness in places is balanced by a ferocity that pulls no punches. In one story, a woman named Tessa details her misuse at the hands of mercenaries, and her revenge. In another sequence, Gus is captured by a vicious slaver named Konstantin, tortured nearly to death and crucified. Yet there’s heart, too, like the funny sequence, “The Bureaucracy of the Dead,” where a member of the group takes minutes chronicling the terrible decisions that have to be made, often by fiat. Don’t miss the interactive map of Bridge City on Jacobs’ website.
For readers who get off on what-would-I-do? questions, this book offers satisfaction.Pub Date: July 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6666-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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