by Matthew Thomas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2018
A well-written, fiery sci-fi tale about human warriors battling an alien regime.
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A ragtag but determined army of exiled human soldiers faces strategic and moral dilemmas while trying to wrest a conquered Earth from an alien empire.
In this sci-fi debut, humanity’s successful technological leap into becoming a space-going culture has brought calamity to the planet. First, contact with nomadic aliens called the Ahai, willing to share “wormhole” technology, triggered the ruinous “Corporate War” launched by human mega-capitalists trying to protect their interests. Then came the threat that placed the Ahai into perpetual drifting exile: a warrior species with insect and reptilian aspects called the Hetarek, who wiped out upward of 90 percent of humanity and turned Earth into a (fairly minor) mining colony in their empire. It is now over 20 years after the subjugation, and the remaining humans toil as slave labor, administrated by long-captured Ahai who are the Hetareks’ puppets plus designated human go-betweens who have mastered the Hetarek language. (Traitorous though they seem, some of these quislings try to avoid unnecessary bloodshed by the occupiers.) An eager force of humans with military training who fled with the accommodating Ahai is rearming and starting to retake old possessions. An elite away team infiltrates the Pacific Northwest to foment resistance and rebellion. But among a generation of humans (and Ahai) who have known nothing but the Hetarek jackboot (or, more accurately, foot claw), the would-be liberators find themselves facing unexpected distrust and treachery. In this series opener, characterizations tend to be pushed to the margins by the intrigue, action, and military jargon–laden dialogue. But Thomas has thought through the mindsets of victors and vanquished, skillfully shading in the psychologies of the opposing forces before small feints and ambushes bloom into full-scale war. The semi-open ending leaves the tale, which at times recalls L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth, open to many further possibilities (most of them promising dire mayhem). Readers may discern in the story’s three-way species conflict parallels to real-life invasions and occupations (quagmires in the Middle East come to mind). But if a metaphor is at work here, it doesn’t overshadow the essential heroics.
A well-written, fiery sci-fi tale about human warriors battling an alien regime.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 521
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
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National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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