A lark that can’t quite follow through on its entertaining setup.
A small town rallies to beat ever worsening odds against its survival in this madcap comic novel by Wensink (Broken Piano for President, 2012, etc.).
The flyspeck town of Dyson, Ohio, is in trouble: A $10 million budget shortfall has it scrambling for revenue ideas. But the locals have little faith in the leadership of its young mayor, Bo, to concoct a tourist-magnet scheme—Dyson has already tried that, trumpeting itself as a “Christmas City.” Oh, and, according to NASA, a falling satellite may blast the town to cinders in a matter of days. The opening sections of this novel are antic fun, and Wensink matches his pileup of absurd predicaments with a motley crew of characters: a Powerball winner trying to launch a casino in town, a suicidal ex-mayor, an on-the-skids radio host hoping the satellite disaster will be his big break, a police chief who was once a world-class opera singer, the owner of a plastic-fruit factory who thinks his product is key to Dyson’s recovery. Wensink knows this setup is so goofball that he doesn’t need to oversell the comedy, and his laugh lines are mostly blunt and deadpan; when Bo asks if the satellite can be shot down, he’s told, “Those missiles are reserved for killing people on the other side of the planet.” But once the nuttiness is established, Wensink struggles to make something of it. Is he satirizing Midwestern civic pride? Tourist traps? Hype-driven news cycles? And why is a mummy wandering around town anyhow? Wensink crams more characters into this clown car than necessary, laboring in the closing chapters to track each of his leads, and the forced, faux-cliffhanger section endings blunt what ought to have been more high-spirited fun.
A lark that can’t quite follow through on its entertaining setup.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940430-56-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Curbside Splendor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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