An engrossing bitter harvest of future bad times that opens a post-apocalyptic trilogy.
A son of wealth and privilege remains shielded from the economic collapse of the United States in the 2030s until political upheaval and disaster tear the country apart.
Dean begins a Thermals of Time trilogy that bids to be early in what will doubtless be much speculative fiction referencing the COVID-19 pandemic. Killer flu is but one of the scourges he unloads on near-future characters after financial markets collapse in what is known as “the Catastrophe.” By the 2030s, the downward spiral of climate change and wealth inequality has left millions in America homeless and starving in an authoritarian country beset by storms, drought, and disease, though rich elites still cling to security at the top. Colorado College student James Mendez is the son of legendary Robert Mendez, a self-made billionaire who knew poverty and acquired financial success for the sake of power. James prefers his gentle mother’s side of the family: hardworking Colorado ranchers. He falls in love with Anna, a homestead-girl-next-door type, instead of one of the Washington, D.C.–connected women his father prefers. Robert forces his son to stay in college with a threat to ruin the farm household of James’ beloved grandfather via the Mendez control of a government-backed big agriculture business. Meanwhile, life outside the lying-news-media bubble just gets worse. A combination of a natural disaster and a violent uprising within the U.S. military ultimately expels James into the blighted streets outside Colorado Springs, where he realizes just how bad things really are as he joins columns of fever-ridden, emaciated refugees. The author drops references to Stephen King’s The Stand and Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove as forebears, but those were thick, detailed novels. Dean’s own narrative is lean and fast-paced—not as stripped down to essentials as Cormac McCarthy’s doomsday classic, The Road, but enough to keep pages turning. No excessive exposition goes, for example, to the attempted coup that finally destroys the sorry U.S. infrastructure (though indications are the plotters were no better than the rotten system they overthrew). Things just get sadder for James until the cliffhanger leading into the sequel. The protagonist is a young guy cut off from all options who doesn’t so much act as react. This is actually somewhat refreshingly realistic as opposed to the hard-charging survivalist type prevalent in “prepper” fiction.
An engrossing bitter harvest of future bad times that opens a post-apocalyptic trilogy. (author bio)Pub Date: March 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73467-460-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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