Canter weaves together exciting action, tender relationships and plausible science in this thought-provoking thriller.
A method for providing artificial vision attracts the attention of a dangerous U.S. black-ops intelligence organization in Canter’s latest thriller.
Nat Colt, a brilliant scientist investigating technology to enhance impaired vision, faces a crucial dilemma: Who will take care of his 9-year-old daughter, Jasmine, after he dies? Nat has brain cancer, and Jasmine’s mother Roan is dead, a victim of arson. Roan, a highly gifted physicist who also happened to be blind, had been Nat’s partner in the lab. When Nat meets Aria Rioverde, a dancer and ethnomusicologist with degenerating eyesight, she seems like the answer to his problems; she’s willing to undergo an experimental procedure that could restore, and even greatly enhance, her vision, and she might become a mother to Jasmine. For Aria, the chance to regain her eyesight, and her career, is worth risking the procedure, and she soon finds herself caring deeply for Nat and Jasmine. But when Aria’s vision begins to evolve beyond normal human capabilities, she discovers that members of a black-ops team are working on their own version of artificial vision. They’re also ruthless killers, who aim to steal Nat’s technology and create the ultimate spy. Canter (Second Nature, 2012, etc.) skillfully balances big ideas with taut action and heartfelt relationships. A bold, surprising plot twist early on adds much to the story, while Canter’s main characters are well-rounded and sympathetic. Nat’s pride in his family history of black cowboys, for example, is intriguing and incorporated well into the plot, as is Aria’s Caribbean-dance background. (Canter makes good use of his own experience drumming and singing in several musical styles.) The author also brings an informed appreciation of art and science, and delivers clear explanations for some heavy concepts in extra sections at the back of the book. Throughout the novel, real human emotions are at stake and the characters’ courage relies on heart, not weaponry.
Canter weaves together exciting action, tender relationships and plausible science in this thought-provoking thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2012
ISBN: 978-1481183819
Page Count: 368
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2013
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
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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