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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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