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
Once again, a highly impressive must-read.
Second part of an alien-contact trilogy (The Three-Body Problem, 2014) from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In the previous book, the inhabitants of Trisolaris, a planet with three suns, discovered that their planet was doomed and that Earth offered a suitable refuge. So, determined to capture Earth and exterminate humanity, the Trisolarans embarked on a 400-year-long interstellar voyage and also sent sophons (enormously sophisticated computers constructed inside the curled-up dimensions of fundamental particles) to spy on humanity and impose an unbreakable block on scientific advance. On Earth, the Earth-Trisolaris Organization formed to help the invaders, despite knowing the inevitable outcome. Humanity’s lone advantage is that Trisolarans are incapable of lying or dissimulation and so cannot understand deceit or subterfuge. This time, with the Trisolarans a few years into their voyage, physicist Ye Wenjie (whose reminiscences drove much of the action in the last book) visits astronomer-turned-sociologist Luo Ji, urging him to develop her ideas on cosmic sociology. The Planetary Defense Council, meanwhile, in order to combat the powerful escapist movement (they want to build starships and flee so that at least some humans will survive), announces the Wallfacer Project. Four selected individuals will be accorded the power to command any resource in order to develop plans to defend Earth, while the details will remain hidden in the thoughts of each Wallfacer, where even the sophons can't reach. To combat this, the ETO creates Wallbreakers, dedicated to deducing and thwarting the plans of the Wallfacers. The chosen Wallfacers are soldier Frederick Tyler, diplomat Manuel Rey Diaz, neuroscientist Bill Hines, and—Luo Ji. Luo has no idea why he was chosen, but, nonetheless, the Trisolarans seem determined to kill him. The plot’s development centers on Liu’s dark and rather gloomy but highly persuasive philosophy, with dazzling ideas and an unsettling, nonlinear, almost nonnarrative structure that demands patience but offers huge rewards.
Once again, a highly impressive must-read.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7708-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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