An imaginative, environmentally minded work of SF.
This last installment of an eco-fiction trilogy continues to explore the future history of an unfrozen Antarctica.
In the not-so-distant future, the melting of the polar ice caps has left Antarctica clear for human habitation. Many of the first-generation settlers, like President of Antarctica John Barrous, are hoping to build a fair, democratic, and environmentally conscious society free of the powerful corporations that helped ruin the rest of the world. With the help of the United Nations, hundreds of cold-climate animal species have been relocated to Antarctica’s Concordia Refuge, but they are now being threatened by poachers from a breakaway Christian cult led by the mysterious Ivan Zoric: “The sparse information on Zoric portrayed a man of humble beginnings morphing into an intelligent, charismatic fanatic. An exquisite manipulator to be sure, but was he the madman others rumored him to be?” John tussles with Zoric over a possible murder investigation, but the issue is brought to a head when a team of scientists working on the refuge, including John’s daughter, Ginnie, and his former girlfriend Lowry Walker, is kidnapped by the cult. The quest to get them back alive will take John out of the ordered streets of his capital, Amundsen, and into the still-wild backcountry of the land he supposedly governs. Lanning’s (The Sting of the Bee, 2018, etc.) prose perfectly summons her winter utopia—Currier & Ives filtered through Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke: “A late winter storm had dropped a blanket of fresh snow overnight. After lunch, the clouds broke, and the sunlight sparkled on the snow as she glided across an open snowfield on her hovershoes.” The attention paid to the technology, economy, and environmental science of John’s Antarctica is far more compelling than one might think and helps increase its verisimilitude. The plot unfurls slowly but deliberatively, and though it at times feels more like a Western than an SF novel, readers will always be along for the ride. Like the best eco-fiction, Lanning’s tale will get the audience thinking seriously about the effect every human endeavor has on the ecosystem without sacrificing characters and story.
An imaginative, environmentally minded work of SF.Pub Date: April 4, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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