A sci-fi-tinged suspense novel that’s as smart as it is entertaining.
In Mayo-Smith’s debut techno-thriller, a handful of people test out the idea of automated government, but it could prove dangerous when some local officials consider it a threat.
When computer technician Kurt Porter found a bug in a contract-bidding program that gave certain companies an unfair advantage, he was framed for cybercrimes that he didn’t commit. Then he gets an early release from prison, although he has no idea why. Outside the prison walls, he meets university professor Anika Patel. It’s not a chance encounter—Anika knows that, before serving his sentence, Kurt wrote 7R1B3, a government-automation program. She’s implemented it in a small town in New York state, Ocean Grove on Fire Island, where she’s the mayor—a job offered to her by mysterious benefactor Raemond Station. But Raemond has an even bigger plan in mind to create a micronation somewhere near Turkey. Raemond contacts various people to implement his grand scheme; the ragtag group includes mechanical/electrical engineers and twin brothers Jiang and Qi Zhāng and popular Puerto Rican blogger Mia Cardona. They work together, with 7R1B3’s guidance, to build the new sovereign nation of Naja, beginning by establishing a new economy. The obstacles that they face, however, are substantial. Turkish President Ömer Ozturk’s public support of Naja puts the new nation in the crosshairs of his rival, Pecer Erbakan, who heads Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, Turkey’s secret police. Also in the mix is Dark Aurora, a computer program created to counter 7R1B3 through such methods as a direct cyberattack and turning deadly drones against the team. From the start, Mayo-Smith establishes an unhurried pace that makes for an engaging thriller. For example, it takes a while for Kurt’s backstory, including the reason for his incarceration, to come to light. Other characters have equally curious backgrounds that connect to Raemond’s recruitment; Anika explains, for example, that she’d been desperate for employment following a sex tape scandal, and Mia uses the job opportunity to escape an abusive boyfriend. Often, the story cloaks elements in mystery. Raemond’s and Dark Aurora’s origins are murky, and Koban Goran, an agricultural chemistry student in Eastern Turkey, has a role in Naja that isn’t made clear for nearly half the novel. Not surprisingly, bits of computer code and related terminology appear throughout, but Mayo-Smith’s concise prose is explanatory without ever feeling condescending. His clarification of 7R1B3’s experiments with artificial intelligence, for example, includes an apt reference to the well-known, real-life video game “SimCity,” describing a “scaled up…absurdly realistic” version of that game’s environment. Indeed, the scenes in which 7R1B3 communicates with Dark Aurora aren’t as complex as they might have been; for instance, 7R1B3’s reasoning is perfectly understandable as it tries to determine whether Dark Aurora is sending botlike random messages. The story also has its share of action, primarily involving assaults by the MIT, but the people in Naja face other menaces—including deadly snakes. The memorable final act includes more than one shocking death.
A sci-fi-tinged suspense novel that’s as smart as it is entertaining.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 610
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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