Confusing sci-fi elements within an unconvincing romance.
Josie finds herself embroiled in a time-travel mystery in Ford’s (Black Moon Draw, 2014, etc.) latest series.
Josie’s visiting Tombstone, Arizona, with her aunt and uncle when she decides to take a quick survey for a $50 gift card—and the chance to talk to Carter, the attractive young man conducting the survey. The questions are unusual: “If you could go back in time to prevent atrocities such as the Trail of Tears experienced by the Native Americans...would you?” She agrees that she’d time travel to save lives in an instant, thinking nothing of it. But over drinks, Carter claims he’s got the power to actually do it: he can send her to 1842, where she could make one change to stop a million deaths. Tipsy, Josie goes along with the joke, letting Carter compare her with a Doctor Who companion and acting impressed when Carter tells her he could plant microchips in her brain that would give her access to historical data and the ability to speak all languages. She doesn’t suspect he’s telling the truth until she wakes up in the Wild West and is directed to find a Choctaw named Running Bear and another man named Taylor Hansen. On September 24, Carter says, one of them will start a war between settlers and Native Americans, and it’s up to Josie to stop it. Of course, Josie has no idea how to do this. Soon, she discovers that Carter’s microchip gives her access to the emotions and memories of those around her, living and dead. She realizes that she’s not the first person he sent back in time—and that the ones who came before her were murdered. Now she has to save herself, too. Josie describes herself as resembling “the perfect blond haired, blue eyed, bubbly cheerleader,” and there’s not much more to her character. Without Carter’s help and that of her convenient empathic abilities, she’d be helpless. And her romance with Taylor feels forced; he’s handsome, she trusts him for no reason, they have sex to fulfill the requirements of the genre. The premise is interesting, however, and hints of Carter’s mysterious agenda give the series something to explore in future installments.
Confusing sci-fi elements within an unconvincing romance.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1623781613
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Guerrilla Wordfare
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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