A veteran of the Israel Defense Forces incorporates his experiences into a brooding military battlefront saga set in wartime Israel.
Bloomfield’s dense, impressive debut opens with a rush of excitement as Bahaa, a soldier on Palestine’s Gaza Strip, flees from Zionist troops but is shot dead, leaving his secret love, an Islamic University history teacher, pregnant with his son. The brawny life of Bahaa’s offspring, christened Anid al-Husseini, forms the grainy crux of the novel, which revolves around an imagined nuclear war between Israel and Iran. As a teenager, joined by best friend Luty, Anid joins the Hamas Islamic resistance movement. Both receive commendations for their bravery and resolve in the face of mortal danger and these attributes carry the men through their college years until Anid is ordered into hiding, just as he becomes smitten with the beautiful Amjad. Meanwhile, young Maj. Gen. Yigal Navon, head of Israeli intelligence, braces for news that Iran has beefed up its nuclear arsenal of ballistic missiles aimed at Israel. A host of soldiers are called into active duty as civilians panic, and Anid’s resilience is tested while on the run through a succession of kidnappings, a ghost from his past and a reunion with Luty and Amjad. The Muslim army’s Operation Judgment Day is set in motion, ensuring the massacre of Jews throughout the region, but Luty seems conflicted about his intentions and puts Anid in danger as Navon, now prime minister, continues to navigate the strife with strategic projects. The author handles the rush and urgency of his war-torn setting well as a dizzying surfeit of surface characters emerge, each ushering along the two-sided battle plan that, while relentlessly violent and stark, is also engagingly complex. His imaginings about an Israelite uprising resonate with harrowing realness and the novel’s unique coda, however heavy-handed, offers postscripts and expansions of his story through pointed conjecture.
Military fiction buffs will find much to savor in this dark novel, rife with chilling authenticity.Pub Date: June 30, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615418179
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Silver Lane
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | THRILLER | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
10
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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. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE
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