A worthy action-adventure/thriller devoted to its sci-fi theme; fans of either genre will be more than content.
Two friends find a previously undiscovered cave, an extraordinary crystal and a foreboding message from an ancient civilization in Hoffmeister’s sci-fi debut.
While Mike and Jim are spelunking, they come across an otherworldly dome. Inside, there’s a crystal and a metal plate with a very specific note with Mike’s name, the day’s date and a directive to show the crystal to someone named Eli. The plate contains another digitally stored message left by a woman from an advanced, ancient society. This information is so significant it piques the interest of Homeland Security and another, more sinister agency. Hoffmeister allows his sci-fi premise to unfold slowly. It’s some time before Eli can pull the digital code to play the message, and there are obstacles, like getting the car (where the metal plate is stashed) out of the police impound lot. The author smartly reveals the woman’s message in pieces rather than all at once; these are some of the book’s best moments and include details of a civilization establishing a colony on the moon, problems with genetically altering animal DNA and time travel. But eventually, the bad guys appear and pave the way for a number of surprisingly heady action sequences, including a gunfight without gravity. Perhaps the thriller’s most inspired parts are the insertion of well-known songs during integral scenes (e.g., Mike hears a song while bullets are flying). The popular tunes will likely stick in readers’ heads; Hoffmeister has essentially scored his novel like a movie. The book also maintains an unsettling mood—characters vanish; a shadowy organization sanctioned by the president operates in the background; and a strange man, who’s been keeping an eye on the protagonists, easily dispatches a trio of thugs to do his bidding. And for good measure, there’s the occasional bout of humor—misunderstanding a woman’s offer of “brown sugar” reaps a comic payoff.
A worthy action-adventure/thriller devoted to its sci-fi theme; fans of either genre will be more than content.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480171145
Page Count: 472
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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