A wild galactic series entry that successfully remains grounded in heartfelt emotion.
The latest installment of Hickman’s space opera finds the teenage title character facing some big life challenges—not the least of which involves saving the galaxy.
Richard, an Ohio teen who was plucked off Earth by aliens and put in charge of the entire Milky Way, has a lot on his plate. After narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, he’s now tasked with quelling escalating tensions between humans and nonhumans all over the star system. He’s also contending with an extended family of anthropomorphic foxes and their intra-pack politics on the planet Beowulf. Amber, who’s one of those foxes and Richard’s wife, admonishes him for tossing out Earth colloquialisms. Richard’s son with Amber, Little Raider, is having a hard time trying to prove his mettle by chasing down prey in the woods with his Uncle Raider, only to realize he’s too squeamish to do what’s expected. Attempting to flee his shame, Little Raider falls in with assassin foxes whom Richard thinks would make great additions to the military forces on his adopted home world of Krel. Meanwhile, Sen. Spartacus and his five-times-great-grandmother continue their villainous quest to kill or kidnap Richard and his loved ones. Heads roll, constantly—Beowulf foxes carry sharp swords. Meanwhile, Richard and Amber possess magical blue energy and can heal loads of trauma, although their powers are supposed to be secret. Thankfully, AAL, a Merlin-like figure overseeing Richard’s escapades, is around to help. Hickman delivers another oddly way-out adventure in his ongoing series. In addition to the aforementioned severed heads, the book also has a good dose of what, depending on the reader, may or may not be an excessive preoccupation with how the space foxes approach procreation. Still, all the sex and violence belies the true beating heart of Hickman’s latest series installment. In the end, it’s not the sweeping swordplay or blaster quick-draws that power the proceedings to this volume’s surprising conclusion, but rather the deep and potent love Richard and his interspecies family continue to have for one another, no matter what comes their way.
A wild galactic series entry that successfully remains grounded in heartfelt emotion.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 448
Publisher: RedFoxOnHigh
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2024
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
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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