For connoisseurs of speculative fiction who enjoy detailed worldbuilding.
In the near future, the world is run by WellCorp but all is far from well.
Stephens’ debut begins in “Zone 874, Pacific Ocean, 29 Days Post-Launch,” where we find one of our two heroines, Maggie, alone and afloat in a vessel called a WellPod, which is about to serve her a so-called latte made of mushrooms and root vegetables. "When Maggie could see the brown sludge that coated the bottom of the mug, she placed it back on the coaster, triggering its descent into the table at the same time her gratitude journal slid out from a lower compartment.” A passion for worldbuilding continues to drive this story of Lenses, Devices, Injectibles, Pohvees, WellNests, EarDrums, and much, much more as we go landside and meet Maggie’s live-in partner, Noa, who works at WellCorp’s Malibu campus, where she and Maggie have been assigned a high-tech apartment. With wildfires, earthquakes, and drought having wiped out most of the rest of California, volunteering for a Pod voyage was Maggie’s only option for getting out of town—and she really needs a break to figure out what to do about her unexpected pregnancy. Oops. In chapters dated by number of days pre- and post-launch, a complicated story unfolds. One has to do with corporate malfeasance and whistleblowing at WellCorp—were the Pods really ready to launch, and is there a major storm underway? Others involve infidelities and betrayals both past and present. It’s hard to keep up with which scary threat you’re supposed to be worrying about and which characters you’re rooting for—and the constant explanations and exposition dry up the juice. The novel is happiest when preparing and serving futuristic meals. “The hatch of her NutriStation opened and Maggie reached inside for her plate. The diagram projected through her Lens mapped out the baked coconut bacon, sun-yellow cherry tomatoes cooked in lab-grown avocado oil and coated in ancient grains aside tempeh topped with a dollop of collagen- and protein-fortified macadamia nut labneh.” Sounds better than the latte, anyway.
For connoisseurs of speculative fiction who enjoy detailed worldbuilding.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781668034316
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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
Hair-raising fun!
Two strange deaths in the desert pose tough questions in this fifth Nora Kelly adventure.
In a remote section of New Mexico, a woman walks alone into the blistering desert heat. In a trance, she ignores her horrific thirst and discards her clothing, piece by piece, until she lies down and dies. Five years later, a video crew with a drone discovers her skeletal remains, which they promptly report. Agent Corrie Swanson is part of an FBI team that heads out into the bleak badlands to investigate. She shares a photo with anthropologist Nora Kelly, who is especially intrigued by the pair of rare green lightning stones found under the skeleton. The woman died with perfect health, yet no one had reported her missing. DNA confirms the 40-ish woman was Molly Vine, an apparently vibrant person who “wouldn’t just throw her life away.” Then the FBI finds another body, another woman, same trail of clothing and pair of green lightning stones, but her death is much more recent. And that’s just the beginning of a tale that gets curiouser and curiouser with discoveries of ancient mass murders and modern mind control. Corrie and Nora are a perfect pair: smart and professional, and with bravery they will need in abundance. At one point, they compare approaches: As an anthropologist, Nora is trained not to judge; as an FBI agent, Corrie is trained to judge. As they delve into the investigation, Nora’s younger brother, Skip, and his billionaire buddy, Edison Nash, complicate matters immensely. They decide to go camping and investigate on their own, and Skip reminds Nash that taking ancient artifacts like an obsidian arrowhead is a felony. But as strange shadows lurk around their faded campfire at night, they learn that getting in trouble with the law is the least of their worries. The landscape imbues a special flavor to this engrossing yarn—the adobe kivas with signs of thousand-year-old murders, the slot canyons, the changing terrain as desert yields to ponderosa pine—and the sandstorms that can abort a rescue. In this setting, an unknown enemy causes cringeworthy violence that the heroes may have to face alone. But as Corrie tells Nora, “We’ve got a gun. We’ve got a knife. Now we need a plan.”
Hair-raising fun!Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781538765821
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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