Loved ones rediscover kinship and common ground in this rich, absorbing dystopian tale.
A mother and her daughter struggle to understand one another and their clashing 22nd-century worlds in Barash’s sci-fi debut.
Erika Verne loses her cyberneticist fiancé to a brutal murder before their daughter is even born. She feels the only way to protect her baby, Veronica, from “this awful world” is to get the girl into Prism, an expansive virtual-reality world. Erika can’t afford this, as she lives in poverty in California City’s smog-covered Groundtown. Fortunately, Paragon, the company behind Prism, chooses Veronica to be part of an experiment to “install” a newborn who’ll grow up in this so-called digital paradise. After 25 years, Erika has seen her daughter face to face a mere eight days per year. But this latest Visitors’ Weekend in Prism takes an unexpected turn after something Veronica has done gets her unceremoniously disconnected. She’s in the real world for the first time in a quarter-century, enduring such brand-new trials as hunger pangs. The mother and daughter regularly bump heads, but not all of their conflict is internal; someone tries to kill one of the women in an apparent murder-for-hire. Erika turns to Wolf, her late fiancé’s friend and business partner, who can help keep Erika and Veronica hidden from whoever is targeting them. Veronica, however, is more invested in finding a particular person tied to a mysterious code, which necessitates a rare trip off the mainland. While it seems that Veronica only wants to return to Prism, Erika doesn’t give up hope that she can somehow connect with her daughter.
Barash has deftly grounded this novel with meticulous worldbuilding. The social classes are visibly separated; the more upscale Midtown and Uptown are accessible via elevators at a Vertical Transport Hub or a taxi-like flyer that requires authorization. Despite the distant-future setting, the story is topical, with characters preferring VR over the frustrations and responsibilities of the real world. The mother-daughter dynamic provides the novel’s fuel—there’s no doubt that Erika has sacrificed a lot for Veronica, whose initial hostility gradually eases up. Many of their conversations spin off into philosophical discourse, giving the narrative a noticeably unhurried pace; this approach perfectly suits the story of two women who are truly getting to know each other. (“I thought you had lived a life of uniform melancholy. I never knew you had once been happy,” Veronica muses. “I didn’t even imagine it was possible.”) The novel hits on familiar sci-fi themes to great effect, including humanity surviving in a world dependent on technology, and the psychological fallout experienced by a VR-immersed (or tech-obsessed) person suddenly cut off. Several mysteries unspool as the story progresses, including stories behind the murder of Veronica’s father and Erika’s facial scar and cybernetic eye. The author’s prose evocatively describes worlds both virtual and real: “They passed below a suspension of fine fishing net into a seemingly makeshift bazaar filled with drying fish and seaweed, scavenged sea-junk, and a patchwork of rugged clothes.” The final act burns with sheer intensity all the way to the end.
Loved ones rediscover kinship and common ground in this rich, absorbing dystopian tale.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9798993078977
Page Count: 750
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2026
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
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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