A momentous, readable collection, its sole downside being that there are only 20 superhero stories.
Reeks (Love Hurts, 2015, etc.) and debut editor Richardson assemble a series of tales centered on superheroes’ constant struggles with saving the world and maintaining secret identities.
In Cat Rambo’s opening “Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut,” the titular character’s all-female band of superheroes adds new members and debates a group name. But everyone has issues with self-identity, from cybernetic Ms. Liberty to shapeless, human-created X. The stories in this book wisely eschew parody, opting instead for characters with special abilities counterbalanced by all-too familiar obstacles. Superhero Alice’s incognito trip to the supermarket, for one, in Seanan McGuire’s “Pedestal,” is ruined by a nosy blogger. Likewise, Mary of Carrie Vaughn’s delightful “Origin Story” spots her high school crush at the bank, only now it seems he’s supervillain Techhunter, in the process of a robbery. Narration and dialogue in the tales follow suit: characters often experience something fascinating that may, rather amusingly, have become routine. Mary, for example, notes Techhunter entering the bank with “a swarm of hovering metallic balls zooming down the hole in the ceiling with him,” adding a somewhat indifferent observation: “They probably shot lasers or tranquilizer darts.” Some of the characters are born into superhero families: Oliver’s fiery ability may be courtesy of his estranged father in Michael Milne’s “Inheritance,” while rumors that rock musician Atlas’ dad was an alien could be true in Nathan Crowder’s “Madjack.” It’s nevertheless possible that superpowers are not a necessity, as in the other “Origin Story,” by Kelly Link; even if Bunnatine’s mom is just a waitress, her daughter may see her as a superhero. Sympathetic supervillains crop up as well: in Keith Frady’s “Fool,” Dr. Entropy isn’t quite ready to go through with his plan to eradicate all life. The tales cater to traditions of comic-book champions, including cities known for frequent superhero appearances (Vaughn’s Commerce City or Crowder’s Cobalt City). But there’s always a twist on the conventional, not so much satire as it is, like any superb comic-book story, an opportunity to dig deeper into characters’ lives. For example, Aimee Ogden (“As I Fall Asleep”) drops readers into recognizable action, with superhero Cerebrelle squaring off against a villain. Cerebrelle’s hazy recollections, however, ultimately lead to a more intimate and rewarding approach—indicative of this vital anthology as a whole.
A momentous, readable collection, its sole downside being that there are only 20 superhero stories.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Meerkat Media
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
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
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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