An uneven but excitingly original spy thriller.
An international act of terror, impending financial collapse, and an ancient aristocratic society converge in Courtenay’s debut thriller.
Ethan Briar is a star intelligence analyst at SOVERINT, a privatized intelligence firm that contracts for the United States government. When his keynote address predicting Germany’s economic collapse coincides with the assassination of Chancellor Armin Frei, Ethan becomes a person of interest. He’s blackmailed into accepting a dangerous mission: to infiltrate Castlemartin Manor, a gothic fortress in Scotland housing an AI called ARCLIGHT (“the world’s first quantum-seeded superintelligence, capable of ingesting human behavior, systemic data, and historical precedent”) that predicts future catastrophes, including the imminent assassination of the U.S. president. Ethan must identify the mole leaking ARCLIGHT’s intelligence to enemies before it’s too late. But as he investigates within Castlemartin’s ancient walls, he uncovers longstanding conspiracies, ancestral hauntings, and an aristocratic cabal that has manipulated world events for centuries. In this stunning debut, Courtenay mixes standard spy-thriller intrigue with gothic mystery and techno-futurism to transcend genre and create a unique piece of fiction. There is tension, however, between the novel’s more run-of-the-mill thriller elements, which seem to serve as a hook for casual readers, and its philosophical, high-minded aspirations. At the start, Ethan is painted as a tortured antihero, burdened by his talent and traumatized by a brush with death; the female characters are two-dimensional and cowed by his complicated, talented mind. The political intrigue surrounding the CIA and Frei’s assassination can read as lackluster and cliché, and the ticking clock trope is too expected. That said, when the story enters its second act and leans into its genre-bending weirdness, it becomes truly engaging and radical. Conversations about the ethics surrounding technology and references to European history add a compelling layer to the perfect blend of gothic mystery and speculative fiction.
An uneven but excitingly original spy thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798218135584
Page Count: 307
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2026
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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