First of a series from Card (Ender's Game; Speaker For the Dead), set in an alternate-world frontier America (early 19th century) west of the Appalachee Mountains, where folk magic works, a stern Lord Protector still rules in Britain, and Red men live peaceably (most of the time) alongside their colonist neighbors. Young Alvin Miller, born with a caul, is the seventh son of a seventh son, and thus highly magical: he can work miracles of healing, and effortlessly manipulates stone and wood; he may even be a Maker, one able to remake the world according to his own desires (Alvin is warned in a vision, however, not to use his gifts selfishly). But there are powers in the world apparently determined to prevent Alvin from growing up: evil spirits of water, which frequently try to kill him; his own father, plagued by terrible and irrational urges to harm the the boy he loves; the Reverend Thrower, a Scottish minister convinced that Alvin is the devil's spawn; and the Unmaker, a shimmery, ill defined thing that Alvin keeps at bay by small creative acts. Still, Alvin has useful friends, among them the itinerant story-teller, Taleswapper, and an unknown benefactor who helps Alvin through long distance magic. Card has uncovered a rich vein of folklore and magic here, to which his assured handling of old-time religion and manifest love of children is admirably suited: an appealing and intriguing effort, and his best so far.
Pub Date: July 31, 1987
ISBN: 0812533054
Page Count: 255
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1987
Categories: SCIENCE FICTION
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
10
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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. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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This future space fantasy might start an underground craze.
It feeds on the shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Martian series), Aeschylus, Christ and J.R. Tolkien. The novel has a closed system of internal cross-references, and features a glossary, maps and appendices dealing with future religions and ecology. Dune itself is a desert planet where a certain spice liquor is mined in the sands; the spice is a supremely addictive narcotic and control of its distribution means control of the universe. This at a future time when the human race has reached a point of intellectual stagnation. What is needed is a Messiah. That's our hero, called variously Paul, then Muad'Dib (the One Who Points the Way), then Kwisatz Haderach (the space-time Messiah). Paul, who is a member of the House of Atreides (!), suddenly blooms in his middle teens with an ability to read the future and the reader too will be fascinated with the outcome of this projection.
With its bug-eyed monsters, one might think Dune was written thirty years ago; it has a fantastically complex schemata and it should interest advanced sci-fi devotees.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1965
ISBN: 0441013597
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Chilton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1965
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION
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