A dense, knotty SF tale set in an age of neo-barbarism.
In the first part of Travagline’s debut SF duology, an itinerant entertainer in a post-apocalyptic, dark-age future keeps memories of the old world alive through storytelling.
About 1,000 years ago, an atomic world war broke out, creating recurring, yearslong nuclear winters around the globe. Civilization, of sorts, has made a slow, painful return, and regional warlords, kings, and guilds compete ruthlessly for power. In the land of Lyrinth in what used to be part of North America, Gnochi Gleeman is an “entertainer,” wandering from place to place, telling his tales of the “first age” world and its achievements. The vagrant guitarist with failing vision may seem unimpressive, but Gleeman is actually an accomplished blade fighter and schemer—a requirement for self-defense, as fanatic “Luddites,” opposed to the progress that brought ruin to mankind, are also a danger to him. But currently, Gleeman has greater concerns. He’s been forced to undertake a mission of treachery and assassination by a man named Jackal, who had his family kidnapped. A complication arises when Cleo, the runaway teenage daughter of an aristocrat, impulsively joins Gleeman, and he doesn’t have the will to force her away. Together, they find tenuous shelter with a “menagerie”—a traveling circus that’s actually a kind of mobile commando unit in disguise. Travagline effectively keeps a lot of subterfuge under wraps and embeds key plot points in flashbacks; moreover, readers get an anthology of Gleeman’s titular tales that are woven into the tapestry of the larger narrative. They include everything from a sort of experimental-theater playlet (“God is a Dinosaur”) to a Civil War spin on Frank R. Stockton’s classic 1882 story “The Lady, or the Tiger?” to a World War II alternate-history tale in which Nazis gain an advantage in 1941. These lengthy asides do push the main plotline to the margins, and other elements, including magic, spirit animals, and psychic phenomena, intrude into Gleeman’s world, leaving a rather peculiar taste; readers may wonder: Was that really a talking white wolf or a piece of one of Aesop’s—or rather Gleeman’s—fables? The finale provides a cliffhanger that virtually severs the story in two.
A dense, knotty SF tale set in an age of neo-barbarism.Pub Date: June 6, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 427
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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