A clever, rousing novel that combines two stories that could each stand alone.
In Walters’ (Breaking Gravity, 2014) thriller, an American businessman is caught up in a secret organization’s plot to commit mass murder.
Joe Kettleman’s fishing trip takes a startling turn when two strangers try to kill him—first with a grenade (which doesn’t go off), and then with bullets. He narrowly survives the attempt and winds up in the hospital for a bullet wound and other injuries. But more bad news awaits: Doctors inform Joe that he has esophageal cancer. He opts to leave his life in Jacksonville, Florida, behind and spend his remaining days in a remote New Mexico cabin that he remembers fondly from his childhood. Months later, Joe is still alive and in need of supplies. During his sure-to-be weeklong trek, he spots what looks like a resort in the middle of nowhere. He soon meets Dr. Yoonie Brandt, who seemingly wants to escape said resort, which she says is a research facility, Arcadia, run by a group called the Order. It turns out that Yoonie is too important for the Order to let her go. She’s made a scientific discovery that will change the world—and, according to Yoonie, it’s why the Order has a plan to wipe out huge numbers of people. To prevent that, Joe and Yoonie will need help from people in a group known as the Resistance. This story initially centers on the protagonist’s surprisingly riveting history. Joe, who doesn’t know his birth name, grows up with a surrogate father, Jim Flint, a hit man that the Mafia sent to kill Joe’s biological dad years ago; Flint loves and raises the boy and teaches him such skills as hyperawareness of his surroundings. Walters adeptly manages the plot shift to Arcadia, gradually introducing sci-fi-infused elements, such as Yoonie’s discovery. Nevertheless, the novel ultimately feels like two loosely connected stories, as Joe’s past has little bearing on his world-saving adventure. Walters keeps the energy high for the entire narrative, however, with snappy dialogue (“She thinks I’m an idiot.”…“Maybe. But you’re a fun idiot.”) and action-oriented prose throughout.
A clever, rousing novel that combines two stories that could each stand alone.Pub Date: May 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73391-171-9
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Mobetter Productions Inc
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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