A didactic dystopian tale that lacks self-awareness.
An experimental community forms a society from scratch in this speculative political novel.
The rules of Microcosm are simple: Its 30,000 residents decide for themselves how to live. There’s no set government; every person has equal resources and opportunities, and they can use them as they see fit: “No longer could people complain that they’d had an unfair disadvantage—people would either sink or swim by their own abilities and decisions, or lack thereof.” This doesn’t work well for everyone, but it seems to work fine for 45-year-old Patton Larsen, who lost his wife and three kids in a car accident and came to Microcosm—or Blue Creek, as the community later comes to be known—to hide away from the world. However, when the lack of laws leads to anxiety and instability, there’s pressure to form a government, though the more libertarian-minded residents, like Patton, vehemently oppose the notion. People tell him that he’s just being paranoid, and eventually, he concedes to working with his neighbors to form the best (and smallest) government possible. Even so, three citizens who rise to power—Charlie Henry, David Asher, and Anna Radinski—quickly implement dictatorial policies that are characterized as socialist. Patton and a small group of like-minded citizens resist the machinations of these would-be tyrants and work to guarantee the liberties of the people of Blue Creek—even if the price is blood. Debut author Hansen offers an intriguing premise in this novel. However, unlike the researchers running the experiment, he’s no impartial observer to the events that he describes; he acknowledges his own disdain for progressivism in his introduction, and the book has a clear and intended libertarian bent throughout. In the end, however, Hansen curiously undercuts his own argument, as the libertarian Utopia of Microcosm is revealed to be structurally unsound, and it falls quickly into a state of instability that, in turn, gives rise to a new regime. The characters are also disappointingly one-dimensional, and Patton, in particular, seems almost like a parody of self-righteous American masculinity.
A didactic dystopian tale that lacks self-awareness.Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4808-6058-2
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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