An impressive cast enhances an engrossing distant-future tale.
A small group in the 23rd century investigates a murder and fights to end a plague in Lachi’s SF thriller.
When Dr. George Q. Ferguson, the brilliant scientist founder of a prestigious New York City academy, dies in a chemical explosion, several of his former students don’t believe that it was an accident (“Dr. Ferguson did not make mistakes….Accidental death wasn’t in the cards for this guy,” one asserts), and they assemble to look into it as a potential homicide. The group includes sex worker and empath Rosa Lejeune, who prefers interacting in a virtual world rather than in the flesh, and Torian “Tory” Ross, the chief crisis officer at the world’s largest conglomerate, who also happens to be transhuman (outfitted with technological implants and grafts). They team up with the same company’s CEO and founder, Paul Oscar Ryland Perry, and skilled biohacker Kris Johnson to investigate and question a host of murder suspects. Things take an unexpected turn when a flu outbreak hits the city that has a link to a brand-new element that the professor discovered. Now they’re determined to do something about the infected people, whose groans and surging numbers make them akin to zombies. Lachi loads the narrative with multidimensional characters and subplots. Rosa, for example, endures a disturbed ex’s relentless harassment and enters into a complicated relationship with the magnetic but entitled CEO. Such characterization makes for a sharp thriller, and it’s one that boasts chic tech—most notably the complicated Ncluded wristbands that keep everyone connected. There’s welcome humor, too; Kris’ blasé attitude is quite charming, as is the talking, sable-spotted Jack Russell robot at his side. The tale veers into a surprising direction in the latter half, as Rosa learns that she has a powerful ability. This, coupled with the intensifying plague, sidelines the entertaining murder mystery, but Lachi’s swift pacing propels a story that manages to wrap up nearly everything while leaving a few juicy items for a possible sequel.
An impressive cast enhances an engrossing distant-future tale.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781955062732
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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