Foot-stomping SF with a complex cosmology beneath its boisterous facade.
In Garmisch’s SF series starter, a humanoid people called Quantums fight a centuries-old war with a neighboring world and an onslaught of genetically engineered monsters.
In a star system “about 24,990 light years from Earth,” enclosed in an impenetrable web of trapped asteroids, are three spacefaring civilizations. Quantums, who are much like humans but with extra thumbs, once neared extinction. Now they live a harmonious way of life that sustains themselves and their planet; they exert perfect mental control over their bodies (and, consequently, sculpt themselves into conventionally attractive bodybuilder and centerfold-model types) and can live for millennia. Their enemies, with whom they’ve been fighting a 5,000-year war, are the greedy Strokes, who aim to conquer and exploit the star system. The primatelike Imeons are in thrall to the Strokes but nurture their own ambitions, driven by profit and obsessive sexual reproduction. Quantums are organized into husband-and-wife teams, with none more formidable than rugged Alboro and “blonde bombshell” Vesta. The latter is heroically killed in action, but not before investing Alboro in a divinely inspired plan (involving God and Satan themselves) to smite the Strokes and rehabilitate the Imeons. The Imeons’ DNA manipulations spawn monstrous Biotoap life forms, which pose an even worse threat. Garmisch delivers an elaborate, lively yarn that has a thoroughgoing, often-comical Tom Robbins-like tone, featuring tributes to Laurel and Hardy, crude jokes, and characters who talk like cartoon cowboys. Violent, hard-combat SF is also present, and the first act firestorms with exotic, sometimes-phallic weapons; ships, tactics, and troop movements; and action-scene rumpuses featuring frequent capitalization, random italics, some boldface text, and barrages of exclamation points. In more relaxed intervals, the dialogue effectively expounds on the fateful, difficult path that led the Quantums to spurn consumerism and conventional government for a “Spirit-of-Life” ethic—an aspect that seems crafted to sway today’s Earth-based readers. However, lest those same readers think that this an apocalyptic climate-change sermon, the author also includes a “Closing Note” that targets what he calls “Fictitious Lying” about global warming.
Foot-stomping SF with a complex cosmology beneath its boisterous facade.Pub Date: April 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798885274135
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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