A smart, edgy, and crisply paced cyberthriller that effortlessly blends its big themes with explosive action.
In Solo’s thriller, an unassuming data analyst in Washington, D.C., fights for freedom and sanity.
The reality of autonomy beats the illusion of it every time. That’s the chief takeaway for tech worker Nathan Carter, the hero of this dark, cerebral techno-thriller that centers on the tensions between the ideals of artificial intelligence governance and the unsavory plans that such technology makes possible. But Nathan doesn’t foresee those struggles when he reluctantly joins co-worker Elena Vasquez to help her spring her brother, Daniel, from a county jail cell after he’s defended himself in a bar fight. To Nathan’s amazement, the officers accede to all his requests, including Daniel’s release to their custody until his next hearing date. Nathan appears to have “bent the whole police station to his will,” and he “hated things that didn’t make sense. Something was wrong.” A sly hint from Elena (“Check your AI action logs”) leads Nathan to a stunning realization that he’s something known as a “Failsafe”: one of a ring of agents tasked by a secretive semi-governmental organization with managing AI through its Monitoring Program—and, by implication, managing human lives. Elena is his handler, or “operative agent,” but a mysterious stranger named Harris whom he meets in a bar seems to know everything about him, as he smugly reveals: “If you think your life is yours, you are mistaken. Every step, every success, every little bit of fortune you think you earned—it’s all been managed and ensured.” Further complications ensue for Nathan after he starts investigating; Elena goes rogue and later helps him to escape from detention, amid further revelations that his daughter, Jess, and wife, Brenda, are playing their own distinct roles in the new scenario.
This novel presents the sort of world where the line between the controllers and the controlled isn’t easily drawn, providing an ideal canvas for addressing larger themes, such as the inevitable tension between technology and freedom. Writers have been mining such rich psychological territory for decades, as in such classic TV fare as The Prisoner. The fact that Nathan won’t accept his lot is a given (“He wasn’t a puppet. He was human. And he had to know”); the tricky aspect for an author is to ensure that the book has sufficient depth of characterization, which makes the big reveals and moments of emotion all the more convincing. Solo accomplishes all this with skill and finesse, as when Elena reveals that she’s been playing the game for her own purposes (“Well…I also didn’t want to see you locked up forever”). Conversely, the stark confidence that Harris projects later yields to a more tragically compromised reality. Emotional depth of this sort isn’t always a part of dystopian fiction, which makes it all the more satisfying when it’s executed so deftly in a punchy and no-nonsense style. Readers will likely reach similar conclusions as they await the second and third installments of this apocalyptic saga.
A smart, edgy, and crisply paced cyberthriller that effortlessly blends its big themes with explosive action.Pub Date: May 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798298118118
Page Count: 202
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
