A spirited cast brightens this gripping, densely packed dystopian tale.
Fragoules’ debut SF novel spotlights remarkable individuals who fight totalitarian rule in a near-future world.
Eighteen-year-old Haven Segreti was born into a dystopian future America. It’s been two decades since a string of disasters—including starvation, disease, and economic collapse—ravaged the country. Haven works as an Assimilation Administrator in the New Republic, which comprises the territory east of the Mississippi River. She processes “outsiders” joining the New Republic’s walled cities. Living in these cities is the only way to get any assistance from a government that demands conformity. Haven considers this a draconian means to control its citizens, a belief that she shares with her charismatic team leader, Adrien Damaso. He’s also the person Haven suspects when someone brutally murders an administrative leader. In Texas, outside of the New Republic’s borders, Nathan Hambrice awakens from a 20-year coma to a “bizarre alternate world.” He’s just as shocked to learn that he has a son living in the east, a revelation that ultimately sends Nathan on a potentially dangerous journey. The author excels at worldbuilding. Front-loading the narrative with exposition gives the story an unrushed tempo; Fragoules favors character development over action, and she meticulously assembles a complex cast. Adrien, for one, is magnetic but unnerving, confessing, “Emotions are an intellectual curiosity for me. My joys come from…darker things.” There’s a propulsive narrative drive as Nathan goes after his son and Haven and her friends fight to free themselves of the New Republic’s authority. This novel, which rolls out a prospective series, leaves much to explore for sequels and hints at expansion, as the former United States isn’t the only region in turmoil.
A spirited cast brightens this gripping, densely packed dystopian tale.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780998740355
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: April 12, 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
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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