An action-packed but melodramatic war tale.
In this historical novel, a friendly rivalry turns bitter when two pilots find themselves on opposing sides as World War II breaks out.
In the 1930s, Aaron Miller and Michael “Miki” von Steuven are both students at Princeton University and the best of friends, despite hailing from radically disparate backgrounds. Aaron’s father is a Polish immigrant who moved to New York nearly penniless and built a wildly successful construction business. Miki grew up in Westphalia; his father is a German noble and the family’s prestige and wealth are tied to an ancient pedigree. But both students are talented pilots, and bond over the amateur races they enter and routinely dominate. These competitions are thrillingly portrayed by January (co-author: Frankenstein Diaries, 2015). The pilots’ friendship, though, is complicated by a shared passion for Lacy Dunbrough. While she loves Aaron, she’s perpetually frustrated by his unserious impetuosity, and her family unabashedly prefers Miki. Miki proposes to Lacy and she accepts. The two move to Germany but she is quickly dismayed by Hitler’s increasingly ominous rule and the malignant treatment of the nation’s Jewish population. Miki joins the Luftwaffe and is sent to Spain, and Lacy begins to worry that he has changed in some profound way she cannot countenance. Meanwhile, Aaron decides to decamp for Canada to join the Royal Air Force, eager to do his part as war finally breaks out in Europe. A grand showdown of sorts between the two expert aviators seems theatrically inevitable, and the emotional stakes are effectively raised when Aaron believes Miki’s shot down one of his closest friends. In his propulsive tale, January vividly captures the fast-paced terror of combat in the air, and the peculiar mixture of precision and bravado displayed by the best pilots. But the predictable plot strains readers’ credulity, and the writing is as unreservedly histrionic as it is formulaic.
An action-packed but melodramatic war tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Winged Lion Publications
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2018
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
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
© 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.
