A fast-paced ride through a dangerous, plausible world dominated by AI.
In the near future, a young man refuses to accept total immersion in the tech-obsessed culture that society foists upon him.
Aiden Baylor is not your typical California high school senior. His peers are consumed with petty insults and completely enslaved to their high-tech environment—virtual reality games, brain chip implants, text messages sent with the blink of an eye or a tilt of the chin—but Aiden would rather grab his guitar and connect with nature. Other kids in his class do as they’re told and accept the status quo, but Aiden questions everything, especially the bunk passed down to him by his teachers. In one way, though, Aiden is just like everyone else: He has a debilitating crush he’s been nursing since kindergarten, and the girl, Ava Durand, has finally started to notice him. And she, too, may not be satisfied with the tech-obsessed and “ill-informed, confused society” in which she’s mired. It just so happens that Aiden’s uncle, Govind, is one of the most powerful arms of that technocracy—the Secretary of Defense of the United States of America. Uncle Govind and Aunt L’Eren are out west ostensibly for L’Eren to give birth around family, but Aiden quickly senses that Govind might be in town for “professional” reasons, and he’s right. Uncle Govind is in California to visit DAPHNE, the all-knowing, state-of-the-art supercomputer in charge of American policies both domestic and foreign. When DAPHNE’s systems go haywire—seemingly resulting from retaliations against the supercomputer’s own attacks on Russian and Chinese systems—the fail-safes of American homeland security are rendered uncontrollable, and the country is poised against arguably the greatest threat of foreign invasion it has ever faced. Though Stevens does sometimes fall a bit too in love with her own imagination—surely we don’t need a description of the provenance and pitfalls of every futuristic device—her worldbuilding is still a delight, and Aiden and Ava provide readers with all the classic fun of an us-against-the-world tale.
A fast-paced ride through a dangerous, plausible world dominated by AI.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780997006841
Page Count: 370
Publisher: FYD Media, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2024
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
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.
In a distant future, after the Last War when the human population became endangered, a new society formed from the ashes, strictly to optimize procreation.
But not procreation between just anyone. This society, ruled by the Illum—a mysterious authoritarian group—assigns mates to select for the best traits and to breed out defects, to grow the Elite population living in the clouds. Protagonist Emeline is a stubborn and bored young woman, working her days away on the ground as a Minor Defect—one of the class of women waiting to be approved for mating with an Elite, and hoping to never be banished further from society. Emeline’s instincts are apparently to reject the rigid decorum of her society, but she spends years trying to follow the rules set out for her, or at least dissociates enough not to challenge her way of life, until one day an elusive and charming man, Hal, walks into her office to talk about art. The same day, she is approved for mating and matched with Collin, the youngest member of the Illum, in the sort of pairing that hasn’t happened in decades. Courtship with Collin is full of luxury—fancy dinners and balls in the clouds—but also lies and days of discovering secrets kept from her, while trying to keep the Elite’s rumors and malicious Press at bay. Caught between these two men, with their own agendas, and so many unanswered questions, Emeline must decide what she wants, if she can want anything at all. With a rebellion rising in secret and the repression of the Illum close at hand, she’ll find what she’s willing to lose for the ability to choose for herself. The dystopian worldbuilding is underdeveloped at best, so get swept up in discovering truth from lies quickly before it starts to fall apart in your hands.
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798217090990
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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