A bleak but intermittently humorous psychological novel with an engaging young female arsonist at its center.
A wildly eclectic SF novel set in futuristic San Francisco from Richardson.
Richardson’s vision of San Francisco in the year 2049 is not entirely unrecognizable. The internet is outlawed, and the police force has been partially robotized; yet people are still free to enjoy drunken reveling and general hedonism. The protagonist, Malibu Makimura, is a 19-year-old movie buff who attempts to make a living drawing caricatures at a women-only nightclub. Malibu has suffered from “suicidal ideation” in the past. By 2049, however, her life has improved (she’s no longer homeless, for one), although the earning potential is limited in her field of work. At the nightclub, she arouses the interest of a mysterious woman named Luciana, who some believe is a witch. She keeps a servant nicknamed Max, who resembles the character Max from 1950’s Sunset Boulevard. She also has enough money to pay certain people to do certain odd jobs for her. And, for some reason, she wants Malibu to burn down local cottages, sometimes with the residents still inside. Why cottages? Malibu gets an innate feeling that certain cottages need to be destroyed. The lives of these cottages “had run their course and they were begging to die.” At least that’s what the voices in her head tell her. It helps that Luciana will reward her handsomely for the service. But why cottages? That’s the novel‘s central mystery. That certain structures deserve a fiery death (at least in Malibu’s mind) also creates some darkly humorous undertones. At one point an inexplicable thought surfaces in Malibu’s head: “Yes, it wants to die,” says a voice in her head as she examines a cottage. Some aspects of Malibu’s life are less than inviting. Her father’s history with LSD is detailed, although this backstory proves to be an undramatic dead end. Likewise, a flashback relating to Malibu’s stay in a mental health facility is a detour that adds little substance to the narrative. This odd, fire-starting protagonist will keep the reader guessing throughout the novel.
A bleak but intermittently humorous psychological novel with an engaging young female arsonist at its center.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2022
ISBN: 9784824151940
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Next Chapter
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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