IMPURE

Name: IMPURE
Author: J.R. Bailey
ISBN: 978-1462020331

RESURRECTION

by J.R. Bailey ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2011

In Bailey’s debut novel, a young necromancer must reign in his “tainted” magic and fight on the side of the righteous.

When Koristad agrees to serve as a proxy lightwielder, protecting the innocent alongside the do-gooders blessed with their goddess’ power, he makes it clear that he considers the responsibility onerous and ironic. His status as a necromancer makes him a more likely threat than ally in the eyes of many of his new comrades. But he owes a debt to Gregan, the lightwielder who refused to kill Koristad when it appeared the boy might have let his power over the dead go too far. Koristad teams up, ever-protesting, with novice healer Peril, and the two get themselves into and out of a variety of violent situations. Throughout them all, Koristad balances his disdain for lightwielder piety with a wish neither to fall prey to his potentially self-annihilating magic nor to kill when unnecessary. The story is deliberately episodic; Koristad faces a necromancer from his past, a barbarian, a werewolf and an angry mob before even hearing about the mission that sets up the book’s sequel. Most of these adventures also include flashbacks that embellish the world’s history or shed light on the kinds of players in it. The result is a well-realized mythology with limited exposition. Venturing into different characters’ backgrounds, however, sometimes serves to highlight the deficiencies of our heroes. Peevish Koristad and vapid Peril have a familiar relationship in which she wishes to be rescued more promptly and he refuses to admit more than a stoic tolerance of her. Love is surely soon to follow. Also likely in the next installment: political intrigue among the lightwielders, Koristad’s confrontation with his father’s killer and more on the identity of the mysterious Wraith, who aids Koristad from beyond the grave. A scattered but enjoyable romp through creative supernatural history.

Pub Date: July 12, 2011

ISBN: 978-1462020331

Page Count: 261

Publisher: iUniverse

Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2011

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY | GENERAL FANTASY

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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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DEVOLUTION

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

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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If nothing else, you have to giggle over how this novel’s namesake, who held vicious white supremacist opinions, must be...

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LOVECRAFT COUNTRY

by Matt Ruff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 16, 2016

Some very nice, very smart African-Americans are plunged into netherworlds of malevolent sorcery in the waning days of Jim Crow—as if Jim Crow alone wasn’t enough of a curse to begin with.

In the northern U.S. of the mid-1950s, as depicted in this merrily macabre pastiche by Ruff (The Mirage, 2012, etc.), Driving While Black is an even more perilous proposition than it is now. Ask Atticus Turner, an African-American Korean War veteran and science-fiction buff, who is compelled to face an all-too-customary gauntlet of racist highway patrolmen and hostile white roadside hamlets en route from his South Side Chicago home to a remote Massachusetts village in search of his curmudgeonly father, Montrose, who was lured away by a young white “sharp dresser” driving a silver Cadillac with tinted windows. At least Atticus isn’t alone; his uncle George, who puts out annual editions of The Safe Negro Travel Guide, is splitting driving duties in his Packard station wagon “with inlaid birch trim and side paneling.” Also along for the ride is Atticus’ childhood friend Letitia Dandridge, another sci-fi fan, whose family lived in the same neighborhood as the Turners. It turns out this road trip is merely the beginning of a series of bizarre chimerical adventures ensnaring both the Turner and Dandridge clans in ancient rituals, arcane magical texts, alternate universes, and transmogrifying potions, all of which bears some resemblance to the supernatural visions of H.P. Lovecraft and other gothic dream makers of the past. Ruff’s ripping yarns often pile on contrivances and overextend the narratives in the grand manner of pulp storytelling, but the reinvented mythos here seems to have aroused in him a newfound empathy and engagement with his characters.

If nothing else, you have to giggle over how this novel’s namesake, who held vicious white supremacist opinions, must be doing triple axels in his grave at the way his imagination has been so impudently shaken and stirred.