A boy’s own adventure that breathes a little well-deserved juvenile humor into the apocalypse.
Dude, it’s the zombie apocalypse. What are you going to do? Turn to page…
Sure, zombie lit is starting to stretch itself a little thin. But with a range of books, from World War Z to the recent spate of rom-zom-coms, there’s no denying the subgenre covers all manner of sins. So why not mine a beloved series of children’s books from the age of MTV? In this case, ad man Brallier (Toilet Trivia, 2009, etc.) sucks the life out of Edward Packard’s famous Choose Your Own Adventure series, updates it with a blazing amount of profanity and violence, and turns the concept into a fun pastiche of B-movie zombie fantasy and interactive horror novel. Here’s the deal: You’re a 25-year-old corporate drone living in an overpriced hole in Manhattan. It’s hot in the city in July and you’re hungover to boot, sweating it through a boring meeting with not a Krispy Kreme in sight. Brallier nails the imperative language that characterizes Packard’s series, and the surprise of integrating adult humor into the mix boosts the funny considerably. Not to mention the fact that the author has an adolescent’s sense of humor—emphatically honest—as to what a guy would really say in the situation. “You sit in your stupid uncomfortable chair, stunned, unable to move,” Brallier writes. "Words dance around your brain along with images from comics and movies—and then finally you blurt out, to no one in particular, ‘Zombies, Zombies…ZOMBIES! THE LIVING FUCKING DEAD!' ” Oh, the choices you’ll make. Guns or the axe? Hang with the biker gang or take out the zombie strippers? Anyone who grew up before the Internet will embrace the style, especially with updated options like this one: “If you’ve got balls the size of coconuts and you want to risk your life to save the boy, turn to page 96.”
A boy’s own adventure that breathes a little well-deserved juvenile humor into the apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0775-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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