Flawed but still impressive. Chess is a writer to watch.
An ambitious debut set in New York, but not the New York we know.
The story's protagonist, Hel, is one of a handful of UDPs—Universally Displaced Persons—who left a parallel world to escape nuclear holocaust. In her world, Hel was a surgeon. Now she’s a refugee with too much time on her hands and a growing obsession with an author named Ezra Sleight. Hel’s lover, Vikram—another UDP—was doing graduate work on Sleight’s science-fiction masterpiece, The Pyronauts, before the end came, but, in our world, Sleight died as a child, long before he ever wrote a word. Hel is convinced that she should turn his house into a museum of memories, a tribute to all the people and things that existed in her world but don’t in the world in which she is stranded. This is a promising concept, and there is much here to enjoy. There’s the frisson of discovering the subtle differences between universes. There’s dark humor in attempts—formal and informal—to acclimate the newcomers. Vikram, who finds work as a security guard, gets nightly lectures from a co-worker “on such diverse topics as John Grisham, Cher, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and the Brooklyn Nets.” There’s obvious—but not belabored—commentary on the immigrant experience in the United States, made more poignant by the fact that, not only can the UDPs never go home, but they also must live in a place in which their home never existed. Hel’s quest to preserve her past is both quixotic and perfectly understandable. But the characters here—especially Hel—are underdeveloped, and much of the plot hinges on a twist that strains credulity. Hel loses The Pyronauts—the only copy in existence, one of Vikram’s prized possessions, and the cornerstone of her proposed museum. And then she doesn’t realize that she’s lost it until it’s been missing for days or weeks. Vikram doesn’t seem to notice its absence, either. Chess’ fantastic worldbuilding is convincing; this depiction of mundane human psychology and behavior is not.
Flawed but still impressive. Chess is a writer to watch.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947793-24-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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