An absorbing story of the end of civilization relayed through a handful of tortured characters.
Life in a post-apocalyptic community may be just as harrowing as that in the devastated outside world in Flinders’ debut dystopian novel.
In April 2021, Zoe Wilkes works at a Parker’s Island, Maryland, restaurant with her best friend and roommate, Ben. They’re sleeping off hangovers when Ben’s older sister, Bex, calls them on their landline. The power has gone out nearly everywhere and cellphones don’t work, so the two drive to Bex’s house in Blair Heights, where she has a generator. A heavy traffic jam, however, prevents them from getting there; they eventually get separated, and Zoe opts to return home. After she endures a mugging by a group of teenagers, she ends up in an “off-the-grid housing community” built by former environmental lobbyist Jacob Malin. His friend Miles Kirby, who used to work on cybersecurity for the government, long feared that terrorists could hack infrastructure systems—which is apparently what happened in “the attack.” Life inside the walls is initially good, with more than 100 people working together to maintain a stockpile of food and other necessities; Zoe and Miles develop a relationship and live together. But soon, the mood within the community darkens, including that of Miles. Then Zoe stumbles upon information about what’s really happening during mysterious “supply runs”—a revelation that upends her life all over again. Flinders energetically details the atmosphere of the uncertain post-blackout world; for example, Zoe is terrified by an unseen threat in the darkness when her car runs out of gas and later feels comfort when gripping the switchblade that Ben gives her. As a result, it’s somewhat disappointing when the story shifts to the smaller community setting. Nevertheless, this choice simplifies the plot, focusing on how internal conflicts and secrets contribute to societal instability; as Zoe aptly puts it, “the world shrank…for all of us.” Flinders’ descriptions sparkle, as when a mass of lumber and parts is called “an unorganized Home Depot with no walls” and when “wilted and dying flowers” are sitting in a vase after someone’s death.
An absorbing story of the end of civilization relayed through a handful of tortured characters.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 203
Publisher: Pruple Pill Publshing
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2017
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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