A delightful genre-blending adventure, even at its most excessively complex.
In Patterson’s fantasy novel, an eclectic group of people discovers a world of clones, extraterrestrials, and various dimensions.
Mary, who lives at a children’s shelter, has learned that her special abilities make her unique—she can hide herself by melding into the environment (“I focused on the porch and went inside”). Mary isn’t at all unhappy when warmhearted school janitor Mr. Hugues, whom she’s previously met, becomes her foster father, and she gets an adoptive brother in Ivan. There’s no question they’re an unusual family—even before Mr. Hugues takes the kids (along with Ivan’s friend Abe) to meet a man who levitates, a woman with wings, and various others. Elsewhere, Geoff, a politician’s son, stops a sexual assault, only to be accused of being the assailant. He and another young man, Cole, whose brother was senselessly murdered for his shoes, are recruited into the Inbetweeners, a group working for the good of the country outfitted with high-tech weaponry. It’s a lot for readers to take in as clone soldiers, time travelers, advanced alien civilizations, and a “multiple universe thing” become the new normal for Mary, Ivan, and the rest. Potential threats loom as well, since an autonomous unit meant to clear out the garbage orbiting Earth in one dimension may become killer robots in another dimension. As if all of this wasn’t complicated enough, one character apparently dies and later wakes up in Limbo (“I’m agnostic. I’m cool with God but I get atheists too”); the character has a chance to save the world, despite the rapture having already happened.
Patterson’s book compiles three seamlessly connected, novella-length “issues.” The fascinating cast features Mary and Ivan, who quickly accept each other as siblings; Geoff, who regularly burglarizes his wealthy neighbors without discrimination; and a man who rescues a boy from a burning building and yet is most definitely not a hero. The author has jam-packed a host of wild ideas into this narrative, which has aliens, superpowers, espionage, and more. It’s hardly surprising that the characters are confused, especially since some of them intentionally withhold information. (Geoff, for example, asks what specific item the Inbetweeners are meant to retrieve and gets a vague response that only stirs up more questions.) Patterson’s straightforward prose and sparse descriptions are generally effective; he typically avoids over-explanations of intricate concepts that might bog down the story. A few more details would be helpful, however, since the time-travel and alternate-dimension elements feel interchangeable, which leads to some convoluted turns. This explanation of a time-traveling bullet is one such example: “From the moment the trigger is pulled to the moment when this bullet reaches its target, an entire universe has [been] born and died… The person who is struck is whipped from the line; anything they’ve done after being shot crumbles from their reality.” Still, the novel’s unpredictability is impressive. A truly entertaining and swiftly paced finale leads to resolution, though any number of these characters may no doubt pop up in subsequent issues or spinoffs.
A delightful genre-blending adventure, even at its most excessively complex.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781959147169
Page Count: 383
Publisher: Double Negative Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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