An action-oriented tale of a high-tech future of bigotry and violence.
In Green’s speculative novel set in a future war-torn America, a biracial political prisoner becomes part of a plan to take down his former childhood friend, who’s now a white supremacist terrorist.
In 2070, in the aftermath of a horrific second civil war, white people are a militant minority, and a Latine government is in power. (“The gringos are simply reaping what they sowed,” said one citizen years ago. “It’s our turn now.”)The White House has relocated to Los Angeles after the detonation of a radwaste-filled terrorist bomb in Washington, D.C. The perpetrator was Alex Weber, aka Hagen, a fugitive white supremacist leader/influencer in the “Nibelung” movement with massive resources, including advanced military technology. The narrative hints that President Maximillian Guerrero allows this public enemy to remain free to justify an authoritarian state that includes DNA tracking, surveillance drones, and general martial law crackdowns. Internment camps fill with Hagen’s presumed followers; Alton Lucas, a Los Angeles teacher, languishes amid crowds of violent white males awaiting Hagen’s promised “return.” Alton is secretly part Hispanic, and he knew Alex as a teenager; he also had a brief affair with Alex’s ex-girlfriend, Kiara Cunningham. Factions in the Guerrero regime know about Alton’s past, and in a rogue operation, they manipulate him as part of a plan to find Alex and Kiara before the terrorists unleash fresh horror on the eve of a historic Mars mission. Green’s novel explosively tackles hot-button issues in a milieu where practically nobody seems to possess spotless morality, except perhaps the compromised and confused Alton, who perceives a desire for power driving the extremists. “Alex’s head on a spike sounds pretty good, honestly,” he says at one point; “Could you live with Kiara’s head on the spike next to his?” responds his interlocutor, Deputy Undersecretary for Defense Diana Áquilar. The action moves at a fast clip, even if half the narrative is given over to a lengthy flashback to Alton’s adolescent heartache, and there’s a somewhat perfunctory home stretch in which fiery action, battleground reversals, and cyborg gunplay threaten to overwhelm weightier concerns.
An action-oriented tale of a high-tech future of bigotry and violence.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2025
ISBN: 9798267598316
Page Count: 400
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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