A gripping flight from totalitarian forces lurking in the shadows.
When her mother goes missing, a teenage girl becomes caught up in the deadly machinations of a near-future surveillance state in Fisher’s speculative thriller.
Sixteen-year-old Rami Carlton lives in Buckhead, Atlanta, 25 years after terrorists unleashed a pandemic upon the world, killing over two billion people. In America, the magnitude of this calamity enabled incoming President Iris Young to implement STaR, a new governmental system consisting of the Safety Division (which carries out compulsory health monitoring), the Threats Division (which acts against the spread of disinformation), and the Reinforcement Division (which stands in place of the police and military as well as the federal agencies). Rami and her 12-year-old brother, Zac, live with their mother, Annie, their father having abandoned them. Life is okay, but when their mother fails to come home one night—just after a power outage shuts down millions of mobile phones across the country, denying people access to the ubiquitous social media platform Allicio (“No phone, no camera, no selfies. I might as well die”)—Rami is plunged into a world of conspiracy. The STaR officers assigned to their case seem more interested in investigating her mother’s implied anti-government insurgence than her disappearance. Furthermore, Rami finds herself being stalked by Dominic Bell, a former military special forces operative who threatens to kill Zac. The author’s prose is assured and the teen elements—Rami’s friendship with her best friend, Lela, and the inevitable love triangle between Rami, lacrosse jock Brannon, and chess-playing tech nerd Finley—play out harmoniously alongside and within the dystopian thriller plot. The latter is twisty and abstruse, and while Fisher occasionally rushes past key moments, the text conveys a palpable sense of helplessness and conspiracy throughout. Rami is a relatable protagonist: uncertain, headstrong, emotionally confused, yet determined and fiercely protective of those she loves. The minor characters have substance and dimension, and Rami proves herself an astute observer of the world that awaits us and the people who inhabit it. The story moves quickly, and while the denouement isn’t as neat or satisfying as readers might crave, the path Rami treads is well worth following.
A gripping flight from totalitarian forces lurking in the shadows.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2023
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
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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