For readers needing food for thought, Curtis lays on a veritable feast.
Curtis’ political thriller grapples with the big question of our age: Will artificial intelligence become our servant or our master?
In a fictional near future, one of the richest and most powerful men on the planet is one Doran Nastov, an AI genius and the founder of Nastcoin, a cryptocurrency that’s challenging the U.S. dollar as the world’s dominant currency. Readers meet him when he’s about to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, so he’s clearly revered throughout the world; his charitable work is legendary, and he would be mobbed like a rock star if not for his tight security. Is it any wonder that he also has a messiah complex? His main deputy and fixer is Evan “War” Pardee. In the opposite corner (so to speak) is the POTUS, an amiable man named Driscoll Stannin, whose chief of staff is Pardee’s longtime rival in high-stakes politics, Stewart Beckman. Can Nastov strongarm the administration, and the head of Ameribank, the world’s largest, into converting their assets into Nastcoins? One point of leverage is that Stannin has a secret and serious porn addiction, as Nastov knows (Nastov’s omniscience is second only to God’s). When apprised that he’s been found out, Stannin poisons himself, clearing the way for his vice president, the underappreciated Liam Rogers, to become POTUS. Nastov’s crowning creation is the titular Book of Life, a sexy android who’s the embodiment of AI: Think of a Siri or Alexa but with superpowers, and so alluring that Nastov at one point is on the verge of making love to her. Meanwhile, Stewart Beckman has an assistant by the name of Chester Wiggins, a classic computer nerd who lives by analytics and who comes into his own in the later chapters of the book. In fact, it’s appropriate that he should be the one in the final showdown—if that’s the right word—with the Book of Life.
This is an entertaining, thoughtful book despite some awkward writing (“he slowly rose his hands”; “Rogers’s eyes glared”; “the director’s posture bowed up”). Curtis clearly wants his audience to reflect upon philosophical and theological matters; readers learn, for example, that the young Nastov was enraptured by evangelical religion, but something happened to shake his faith. He could have been the world’s most powerful evangelist, but instead he became a God-haunted agnostic. (One scene between Doran Nastov and Liam Rogers is clearly meant to evoke Christ’s Temptation in the Desert.) Rather, Nastov offers only everlasting Good, and what’s wrong with that? The last four or five chapters offer a cascade of revelations and surprises as Wiggins—a computer nerd we only thought we knew—and the Book of Life face off. Nastov’s AI creation is as omniscient as God, so what other powers could she be preparing to usurp?
For readers needing food for thought, Curtis lays on a veritable feast.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781665752633
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2026
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
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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