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
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
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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