An interplanetary biker-squad romp that’s less cheesy than the Russ Meyer–esque premise suggests.
Three very different young women in a space-traveling future form a quasi-successful criminal gang.
Set in an unspecified, spacegoing future, Vibbert’s novel revolves around the conceit of “solo-flyers”—zippy little one-seater (very occasionally two-seater) minispaceships, capable of faster-than-light travel. The technology occupies a niche akin to that of motorcycles. The author’s native Cleveland, Ohio, makes an appearance (pretty much as dingy and unfashionable as the present-day Cleveland) as the territory of Ki, a petite, young petty crook, con artist, and aspiring adventurer, who inherits a swanky solo-flyer from a boyfriend dying of a genetic ailment. While joyriding within the solar system, Ki meets Margot, almost her complete opposite. Former low-ranking military and now unable to find a job, the ultracautious Margot has, untypically, overspent her budget on a solo-flyer; she dreads having to go back and live with her stifling Vietnamese parents on Luna. Ki drags her into a police chase and then a fortune-hunting excursion to the distant, exotic planet of Ratana. There, they find a third kindred spirit, Zuleikah, a poor-little-rich-girl member of Ratana’s nobility, for whom solo-flyers are an escape from the boredom of aristocracy. The incorrigible Ki pronounces their trio an official criminal gang—the Galactic Hellcats—and they fumblingly try to pull off their first big caper, the kidnapping of Ratana’s handsome Prince Thane. The prince turns out to be gay and closeted, unhappy in his royal role, and a pawn in a brewing palace coup that was going to put him in jeopardy anyway. Not quite as outwardly comedic as it sounds, the material zips along in extravagant space-opera fashion, with the subplot about Prince Thane making a sort of straight-faced salute to vintage Ruritanian adventure yarns of yesteryear. It overall plays breezily and well, considering the author is revisiting a premise she started drafting in adolescence. Fans of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series might take especially well to these idiosyncratic space outlaws, and the material’s gender switches on character roles do not feel forced or gimmicky. The result is a noncondescending space ride suitable for savvy YA readers as well as older genre fans.
An interplanetary biker-squad romp that’s less cheesy than the Russ Meyer–esque premise suggests. (acknowledgments)Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-952283-07-9
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Vernacular Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2021
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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