A taut, elegiac political thriller and a fierce swipe at Putin’s efforts to make Russia great again.
A hostage crisis in a village near Moscow raises questions about Russian military aggression in recent years.
A journalist named Pavel Vladimirovich, the book’s narrator, becomes embroiled in the news in 2015 when a group of men take 112 people hostage in a church. The group’s Russian leader, Vadim Petrovich Seryegin, known as Vadik, wants Pavel to serve as one of his negotiators. Pavel had helped get Vadik released when he was captured during the First Chechen-Russian War (1994-1996). Flashbacks and conversations between Pavel and Vadik fill in the subsequent years, touching on ethnic conflicts since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 but mainly on the wars involving Chechnya and Ukraine. (Beyond the glossary provided, the author assumes a considerable knowledge of the relevant history.) Shevelev, a Russian journalist who has published another novel and collections of short stories, gradually reveals how Vadik became a terrorist and how Pavel grew cynical about news media—two paths that give the author room for mordant comments on politics, violence, police and KGB abuses, and journalism. While one man turns to threatened slaughter unless Putin publicly apologizes for the Chechnya and Ukraine wars, the other writes a six-page screed on those who do nothing, mainly Russians who fail to oppose the Kremlin: “A hundred people gathered on Pushkin Square in Moscow when the second war in Chechnya began and Grozny was completely leveled to the ground.” (The translation by Baer and Vayner conveys well Pavel’s savvy, rueful voice.) The central point is failure. Shevelev is quoted in introductory material saying that he turned to fiction because journalism stopped being an “effective tool” for change. Among Vadik’s last comments to Pavel is: “I want to understand why all your words missed the mark.”
A taut, elegiac political thriller and a fierce swipe at Putin’s efforts to make Russia great again.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-60945-811-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
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
Exciting adventure that’s worthy of the Cussler name.
The Oregon crew takes on a villain who bears a long-festering grudge.
In 1945, a captured American soldier unwillingly took part in a ghastly experiment. In the current day, a malign force has built on that research and plans to wreak unholy vengeance on Guam and, ultimately, on the United States. A mysterious, much-feared man called the Vendor, an arms purveyor whose increasingly dangerous weapons have just slaughtered soldiers in Niger, is testing his killing craft in the Indian Ocean. The Vendor’s reach extends as far as Kosovo and the Celebes Sea off the Philippines, where North Koreans try out some of his handiwork. Luckily, a modest-looking cargo ship plies the seas. It’s the Oregon, with all the internal wizardry one might wish for. It has a Cray computer, Cordon Bleu–trained chefs, and plenty of amenities to keep a top-notch crew dedicated. The seawater-powered ship can even change its outward appearance to disguise itself as the lowliest third-world rust bucket. In charge of this marvel is Juan Cabrillo, the protagonist. The crew of the Oregon are independent contractors and undertake an urgent mission from the CIA to investigate arms trafficking by the Taliban. That leads to an inevitable collision with the Vendor, whose tentacles reach far and wide. This might spell the end for Cabrillo because the Vendor “had proven himself unequaled in unarmed combat.” The Oregon Files series is always fun, and this episode is no exception. Cabrillo is a terrific leader in top physical shape, but he and the ship itself are tested to their limits. Of course, some of Oregon’s features beggar belief, but never you mind. They fit in well with the now-and-then over-the-top writing: “A giant piece of red-hot aluminum sliced through Juan’s fragile canopy like a drunken samurai’s katana through a rice-paper wall.” It’s hard to read a simile like that and not stop and smile. And in the same action sequence, the hero hits an object “like a speeding hockey forward cross-checking a parked Zamboni.” Ouch. It all “hurt like the dickens,” which is about as salty as the language gets.
Exciting adventure that’s worthy of the Cussler name.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593719244
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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