An intriguing but intensely violent SF tale.
An agent must save a primitive race from repressive overlords in this religious/SF adventure.
In 2024, an alien signal breached every device on Earth capable of transmitting sound. The signal contained the words warand omim. This caused the world’s governments to unite around the notions that alien contact would be disastrous and that humanity must remain hidden from extraterrestrial civilizations. A group called the Saganites rejected this decision. These followers of famed science educator Carl Sagan wanted to contact aliens by any means necessary. Now, in 3024, humanity has colonized Mars. Agent Adam McShane of the Space Intelligence Agency has just celebrated his 50th birthday on Sex Club Row in Texopolis (formerly Texas, now a giant metropolis). In six months, he plans to retire from the SIA. Yet when Blue, the central government’s artificial intelligence, assigns him to stop a “SETI violation code six,” he has no choice but to accept the mission. Adam joins agents DeMartin and Vasquez in assaulting the Saganites’ secret Mars base. In the ensuing chaos, Adam is trapped on the rebel ship as it launches for Omega, the omim signal’s planet of origin. Miraculously, he survives the trip to Omega while a Saganite rebel rests in a hibernation chamber aboard. Her name is Lilith Sands, and Adam is immediately struck by her youth and beauty as she wakes. But she blames him for the death of her mate, Moksha the Seer, with whom she planned to greet the aliens of Omega. Now, the pair must navigate an untamed world full of primitive and dangerous creatures. Watching their progress is Sheeol, leader of the colonizing Omim race, who has dark designs for humanity.
McGruther’s tale will remind longtime SF fans of a classic Star Trek television episode in which Capt. James T. Kirk’s machismo saves the day. A tonal update to the formula adds plenty of violence and viscera, as the theoretically immortal Omim enact and survive punishments like villains from a 1980s action film. In one scene, “blown-apart Omim fragments formed into long centipedes with tiny human hands...scratching and clawing with razor-sharp nails.” The author also writes beautifully about alien worlds, as when Adam stares into the starlit night and “the cosmos...started to merge with the translucent slugs in the foreground, making it feel like I was hallucinating, watching the sky melt and drip in a cosmic dance.” Unfortunately, the cast is packed with caricatures. Adam is a “gentleman” who tries to treat Lilith deferentially, yet when he offers her assistance, she replies: “I don’t need a man to save me.” The only element more intrusive in this narrative than shallow gender politics is the attempt at religiosity. When the pair finds fresh water, Lilith says: “Oh, thank goodness.” Adam corrects her with “Thank God.” As for the Omim, they possess androgynous beauty and cloven hooves like the devil, and they literally eat souls. Whether these elements taken together play as horror or comedy will vary among readers. One motif that isn’t ambiguous is McGruther’s philosophical overreach in positing the supremacy of Christian values in a gore-laden genre novel. If Adam and Lilith had no Omim enemies to battle in converting the Omegans to God’s flock, they might have simply handed out copies of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian.
An intriguing but intensely violent SF tale.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-36262-5
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Hosel & Ferrule Books
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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