Enjoyable, funny, and thought-provoking speculative fiction.
Hincker presents an SF story of first contact, human survival, and banking.
When aliens first arrived on Earth in the year 2047, economist Diana Roark, the CEO of Roark Pharmaceuticals, was down on the ocean floor on a near-fatal deep-water bioprospecting mission that “shattered” an arm and a leg. As a result, she missed the alien visitation; three hours after they showed up, they were gone, having provided Augmentation that made all bodies on Earth run at peak efficiency and mysterious Obelisks that provided all of humanity’s basic needs. Thirty years later, the whole world has changed: “Why work, they had reasoned, at meaningless careers, when food and water were free, health care unnecessary, and when the natural elements had been conquered?” But for Diana, everything remained the same; as far as she knows, she’s the only human who didn’t go through Augmentation. Now 60—and unlike everyone else, showing her age—she has bone cancer that’s about to end her life, so she decides to go on the secret vacation she’s been planning. But before she can fulfill her last wishes, she’s kidnapped by an operative from the World Bank who mistakenly believes that she knows more about the aliens than anyone else does. She’s rescued by Robert, a foulmouthed alien account executive who resembles broccoli and who tells Diana she has only 48 hours left to save Earth. What follows is a unique, frantic, fun, and thought-provoking SF tale that takes surprising twists and turns. Often, it delivers unexpectedly humorous observations: “It wasn’t much of a plan, but economists were notorious for unreasonable passions and commitment to untestable theories.” Hincker essentially offers a book about banking and economists—who are both the villains and heroes of this piece—that’s anything but dry or dogmatic. Quite the contrary, it’s a zany romp with heart, reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1980) and its sequels as it follows Diana in her earnest journey of healing and heroism. An open ending promises more delights to come.
Enjoyable, funny, and thought-provoking speculative fiction.Pub Date: May 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798987630105
Page Count: 316
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
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A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.
The 25th novel featuring Silva’s legendary protagonist.
During his intersecting careers as art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon has tangled with Russian gangsters and al-Qaida terrorists. He has become well-acquainted with operatives in multiple security agencies and befriended a paid assassin. He has busted art thieves and created passable forgeries by Renaissance masters and abstract Modernists. This latest installment centers around his relationship with the pope and a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has gone missing from the Vatican. Silva’s novels tend to fall into two categories: books that reflect the politics of the day and books that don’t. His latest is one of the latter, which could be a treat for readers looking for escape, but it falls flat for a variety of reasons. Luxury has always been part of Gabriel Allon’s universe. It used to be an aspect of tradecraft, though. Allon would be wearing a very expensive suit and driving a very expensive car because he was posing as a client at a Swiss bank. Here, his wife is hosting a catered lunch for 150 of their daughter’s classmates in their apartment overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. What once felt like a scintillating peek into the world of the obscenely wealthy now just feels…kind of obscene. Similarly, Allon goes chasing after a missing painting as a civilian—he retired from Mossad in Portrait of an Unknown Woman (2022)—the same way another man his age might buy a speedboat or get hair plugs. As the story progresses, the stakes are raised, but it’s hard to forget that Allon is now a middle-aged man pursuing a dangerous hobby, rather than a spymaster leading his intrepid team to prevent a disaster that will disrupt the global order.
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063384217
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
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