Flighty alien antics featuring action, humor, and a saucerful of UFO–conspiracy theories.
A humanoid but catlike alien crashes near Sedona, Arizona, and attempts to make first contact with humans in Korolev’s SF novel.
Kedi M’Tschaka is a Mehari alien scientist whose craft falls to Earth—a planet that the Mehari call “Tellus.” He heads to nearby New Age hotspot Sedona, where the apparently spaced-out inhabitants are open to the notion of extraterrestrials. The alien, whose features resemble a feline’s, finds shelter with a mystical books–and-crystal retailer named Crystal Hopkins and her conservative Christian boyfriend, Dennis Parker. They both try to help the leonine creature fix his ship and get back to his home planet. However, Kedi doesn’t realize that his accident was deliberately arranged by rogue members of the Confederation of Planets to force a first-contact situation on Earth; otherwise, these members believe, humanity will fall victim to its own self-destructive, ecologically destructive ways—and become prey for the Apacians, the bulbous-headed, big-eyed gray aliens of Roswell lore, who covet humanity’s real estate and DNA. A more immediate menace, however, is a squad of power- and glory-hungry American soldiers attached to a secret “Majestic” unit that routinely covers up the existence of aliens. The author’s tone strikes some comic notes—allergies to cats recur, for instance—and fans will appreciate shoutouts to Larry Niven’s feline star-warriors, the Kzinti, and author Dean Koontz. An intriguing subplot explores the notion that, as a second-class male citizen in a matriarchal race, Kedi has hefty cultural baggage that he carries along with him. Too often, though, the narrative lapses into strident denunciations of the military-industrial complex and the corrupt authorities who suppress the truth about alien spacecraft. There are also admiring tributes to real-life author Richard C. Hoagland and MUFON, aka the Mutual UFO Network, who study alleged sightings of UFOs. Overall, it will be literary catnip for paranormal-podcast disciples.
Flighty alien antics featuring action, humor, and a saucerful of UFO–conspiracy theories.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Mockingbird Lane Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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