An unpredictable fictional journey through an engrossing urban landscape.
An aspiring writer embarks on a peculiar adventure in Siwicki’s debut novel.
John Bird Ray has an established career as a photographer, but he’s looking to write a novel, and he travels from Mississippi to Chicago for material. There, John meets many people, including a man named Nick Zinty who claims to be a detective. At a street fair, he buys a painting of a cat, and to celebrate the purchase he drinks some strange-tasting tea with the artist. Things take a turn when a woman named Samantha tells John that she thinks she is being followed; her pursuer is none other than Zinty. Developments only get stranger as John meets more strangers and takes the time to scribble down his many philosophical thoughts and observations: “What secrets does space hide? When will they be uncovered? Do groups with members from around the world get together and discuss these issues. Maybe they know something we don’t? Are they superhuman?” In Siwicki’s highly episodic account, John’s actions lead him to such events as a pleasant meal at a local restaurant, a night in jail, and a science-fiction-like “battle for minds, and a war for souls” involving “bubble infusions” and knock-out darts. Seemingly anything can happen in this city and its surroundings, but is any of it real? Overall, the narrative goes to many lively places, and once the story gets rolling there’s no telling what John will do next, as he seems to be open to just about anything life throws at him. However, his odyssey is slowed by extraneous dialogue; for instance, as John meets a lot of people, he introduces himself over and over again. Nevertheless, the author is successful at maintaining readers’ curiosity, and as John moves from place to place, it remains an open question how his story will end.
An unpredictable fictional journey through an engrossing urban landscape.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9792622-1-0
Page Count: 342
Publisher: SLABYPRESS
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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
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