A page-turner that tackles its genre in offbeat and compelling ways.
In Stone’s speculative thriller, two strangers who meet by chance must help each other survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Rather than opening with typical fare for after-the-end fiction—such as buildings collapsing or crowds fleeing explosions—this novel opens on a quieter but more chilling note, as a pregnant woman named Hannah Sheridan realizes that the power’s gone out in her cell. She’s been held captive for five years by sadistic rapist Gavin Pike; now, in his absence, her prison’s electric door unlocks and swings open. Hannah escapes and flees into the harsh Michigan winter, knowing that time is short before her tormentor begins hunting her down. Her plight is part of a larger, puzzling catastrophe, as the entire United States has been hit by an electromagnetic pulse: “Some people thought an EMP would destroy every electronic device in the country, no matter how small. Other people believed an EMP would only take out the electrical grid, and maybe only regionally. In reality, not even nuclear physicists and scientific experts knew what would happen for sure.” Hannah becomes aware of the extent of the destruction when she accepts help from Liam, a veteran of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, who explains that “No power means no heat. Few working vehicles means no food deliveries, no medical supply deliveries, no gas tanker deliveries.” He’s grieving his brother and sister-in-law’s deaths in the aftermath of the EMP, but he provides Hannah with protection on two fronts—by helping her elude Pike and by keeping her safe from other threats as society descends into chaos. Stone delivers a thriller that’s well-paced throughout, and it’s especially effective at evoking Hannah’s near-constant fear: “She desperately wanted to curl into a ball and cover her head with her hands like a child shrouding her face with a blanket.” Parts of the story strain plausibility, and because this volume is the first in a series, the ending is frustratingly inconclusive. However, the story maintains a level of excitement that will keep many readers engaged enough that they won’t quibble over such details.
A page-turner that tackles its genre in offbeat and compelling ways.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2020
ISBN: 9781945410475
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Paper Moon Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2025
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
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
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