An ambitious SF mystery that sometimes loses itself in the execution.
A debut SF novel sees the heir to a 700-year-old fortune trace the history of that wealth and the people who have fought over it.
Twenty-nine-year-old William Ward works for the Interlaken Beer Company. Back in the 1300s, one of Interlaken’s eight founders—William Ward I—sold his share to the other seven and then bequeathed his fortune to the descendant who could find the riches. Since then, many Wards have tried and failed to uncover the inheritance, some dying in the process. Despite his father’s warnings, William is determined to take up the search. He sets out from San Diego, California, bound for Switzerland. He travels by boat, working on a pleasure yacht. There, he meets Nikher, a competent young woman, and Cillian, an Irishman, who save him during an attempted attack by pirates. William, it turns out, is not the only Interlaken heir. All eight founders left descendants. Six of these lines will side with William; the other line is “evil” and has perpetrated many of the world’s atrocities. Armed with SkyView—a cloaked supersonic jet with the power to project and even alter historical reality—can William and his new companions put an end to the eighth line? Sheehan writes in a workmanlike manner, diligently setting down both the narrative and character reactions and leaving nothing to inference. This thoroughness of description gives the book the aura of a screenplay. Events are easy to imagine playing out on the big screen yet the prose itself is not particularly engaging. Characters who raise their voices tend to “scream.” Adverbs are ubiquitous and often ungainly; for example: “Aoife looked shockingly at Nikher, nervous about the weapon. ‘You like?’ Archelaus proudly asked.” The result is that the story relies for its appeal on readers’ immersion in the central concept. This has been comprehensively thought out. The author brings an almost Tolkien-like diligence to detailing family lines and historical events. Unfortunately, much of this exposition comes by way of dialogue. There is a paucity of action in the moment and an abundance of characters explaining things to one another. Rather than standing out, the protagonists thereby blend into homogenous mouthpieces. The plot suffers similarly from this sluggishness of pacing. Sheehan presents a wealth of intriguing ideas but readers will have to work hard to access them.
An ambitious SF mystery that sometimes loses itself in the execution.Pub Date: July 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5255-7606-5
Page Count: 396
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2020
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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