A twisty time hop that never fully escapes the shadow of its influences.
An attempt on her partner’s life forces a time-hopping cop to go on the lam in search of answers.
When she was just 6 years old, Miriam Randle witnessed her twin brother's murder, and the event has colored her entire life. If Jeremy had lived, her mother would not have abandoned her. She would not have had to manage her father's alcoholism on her own, and there would be someone else to care for her estranged mother now, in the wake of an early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis. At 26, Miriam works as a “travel agent”: a private law enforcement officer who goes back in time to stop murders before they happen. Hours after a mission goes sideways, she narrowly misses the chance to stop a would-be assassin from gravely injuring her partner, Vax. These back-to-back failures would be enough to unsettle any agent, but they fall on the 20th anniversary of Jeremy’s death. The ensuing debriefing reveals Miriam and Vax’s affair as well as his belief that Miriam may be losing her grip. All signs indicate that Vax’s assailant is a rogue agent, but the duo's handler does not give Miriam time to testify. He fires her mere moments before the killer strikes again, leaving her in possession of a literal smoking gun. Shades of classic science fiction permeate Bellin's neonoir, to both positive and negative effect. The central mystery keeps the pages turning well into the third act, but the author doesn't provide readers with the necessary tools to stitch the case together for themselves, resulting in several eleventh-hour reveals that feel unearned. In spite of the lack of signposting, however, readers familiar with Bellin's SF predecessors will spot many of the plot twists coming from miles away. That may please eagle-eyed speculative-fiction fans, but Bellin's decision to forego the trail of breadcrumbs may disappoint readers who approach this genre blender as a thriller.
A twisty time hop that never fully escapes the shadow of its influences.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781915202468
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Angry Robot Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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