A straightforward, absorbing tale that unfolds inside a beefy futuristic setting.
In this sci-fi novel, several space travelers in deep sleep awaken inside avatars in a simulated world.
Miranda Sage, along with others aboard the spaceship The Misfit, is in stasis, living a full life inside a simulation. When something knocks the ship off course, a power surge wakes everyone from the Stasis Deep Sleep System. Back in the Real Realm, in 3272, crewmate Adayln realizes the surge also unlocked the reputedly unhackable system. Though the town of Penticton is the only accessible place in the SDS, Adayln finds existing code for other areas—files just as large as Penticton’s. She and Miranda concoct a plan: Adayln alters the code so, during the next simulation, their conscious minds will awaken inside avatars and the two can then explore. They set a 24-hour limit on the awakened consciousness, as continuing any longer, based on rumored incidents, may drive them mad. Unfortunately, things go wrong: They aren’t the only awakened people, and the time restriction inexplicably fails. Miranda and her cohorts need a way to end the simulation without harming their bodies in stasis. Answers may lie with a well-known author in the Real Realm who stayed perfectly sane while supposedly enjoying awakened lives in the SDS. Lloyd (Journey to the West Valley Wall, 2018, etc.) packs this novel with intriguing ideas, including characters transferring from biological bodies to husks and an ongoing, centurieslong war that affects the SDS creator, LaPorte Industries. There’s plenty of engrossing material for additional books: Miranda, for example, with combined time in the SDS and various husk bodies, has existed for 1,296 years. Despite the dense sci-fi backdrop, the author maintains a simple plot that clearly and aptly details intricate concepts, like the dichotomy between Miranda’s life and that of her avatar, Josie. Narrative obstacles are likewise easy to follow: Mere romance may dampen Miranda’s desire to leave the SDS. While the story ends with an impressive shock, lingering questions regarding the simulation as well as certain characters remain.
A straightforward, absorbing tale that unfolds inside a beefy futuristic setting.Pub Date: April 21, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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