A cotton-candy science thriller, Crichton's first novel in seven years matches neither the hardcore suspense nor the wit of his The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, or Congo. But this spirited tale of a science team sent to explore a spaceship found on the Pacific floor does engross via its rich seeding of techno/oceanic lore and a happy plot that bounces merrily along from one surprise to the next. Reflecting his own march into middle-age, Crichton here offers his oldest hero yet, 53-year-old psychologist Norman Johnson, expert in the embryonic field of alien contact. Johnson is whisked off by the Navy to the South Seas along with five other scientists, most notably young black math-whiz Harold Adams and pretty zoologist Beth Halpern. After a shocking debriefing—they're told about the alien ship lying 1000 feet below the waves—the five descend by minisub to a deep-sea habitat. From there, the band explores the spaceship—which they deduce is an earth ship that traveled here from the future via a black hole—and find the sphere: a 30-foot wide hollow silver ball, clearly an alien artifact. All this is intriguing stuff, but without much tension; so Crichton dusts off an old ploy; he isolates his characters by whipping up a typhoon that cuts off surface aid, and then transforms the sphere into a Pandora's box of horrors. Adams finds his way into the sphere; after he emerges, it starts communicating via the habitat's computer, claiming to be hosted by an alien named "Jerry." Cute? Not when "Jerry" takes credit for the deadly jellyfish and giant squid that attack the habitat, killing all but Adams, Beth, and Norman. Norman and Beth soon figure out that "Jerry" is really Adams, who's been empowered by the sphere to make nightmares come true; but when they knock him out, the attacks continue, setting up Crichton's final conjuror's cache of tricks and twists, and a pleasingly upbeat ending. This sphere's as lightweight as a balloon floating up and away; but the ascent is swift, smooth, and loads of fun.
Pub Date: June 8, 1987
ISBN: 0062044915
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1987
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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