A striking thrill ride through a future both frightening and tantalizing.
When a man can’t trust his own body and mind, where does he turn? Turner explores that central question in this debut sci-fi novel.
When some men stumble into the perfect life, they’re grateful. Others are proud. But Aiden Markusson can’t help but feel suspicious of his own amazing fortune. With a beautiful home, an enormously successful tech startup, and an incredible level of physique and intellect (matched only by that of his fiancee, Ever), Aiden believes it’s all too good to be true, guided by some unseen hand. Soon enough, his paranoia begins to bear fruit, as his body starts acting strangely, and he finds he’s being followed, not by a business rival but by NuGen, a company on the cutting edge of biomechanical research. Aiden digs deeper into the mystery and discovers that the closer he looks, the more mistrustful he becomes. Even when his most promising lead seems to be nothing more than a garden-variety conspiracy theorist—not to mention a registered sex offender—Aiden can’t put aside his trepidation, and his flawless life descends into a mess of shifting loyalties, fear, and violence. Even some of his pursuers don’t seem to know the whole story. Aiden starts wondering whom he can trust while questioning his own identity: “You really don’t know what’s going on, do you?” But if he’s going to save himself, not to mention his new wife, he’ll need to find out, and fast. While the broad strokes of the initial mystery become clear very quickly, the enthralling thriller delivers surprising layers and keeps readers guessing throughout. Is this player the man behind the curtain or just another piece of the puzzle? Is this character a sidekick or a villain poised to double-cross the hero? These sorts of questions add to the tension created by Aiden’s terror and uncertainty, while insightful descriptions of near-future technologies, from cybernetics to transportation and home computers, give the novel a sense of depth and realism that’s easy to neglect in this sort of sci-fi work. Readers should be left begging for a sequel.
A striking thrill ride through a future both frightening and tantalizing.Pub Date: May 4, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Synchrony Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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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