Judging by the hype, what the publisher hoped for was Lord of Harry Potter’s Dark Materials; what it actually secured is, in...
The first of a medieval-fantasy trilogy from the author of The Golden Age of Censorship (2008, etc.).
At the vast, labyrinthine Sanctuary arrives a seemingly endless supply of orphan boys. Here the religious-fanatic Redeemers attempt to inculcate the boys with their faith while turning them into holy warriors. So unremittingly brutal and sadistic are their methods, however, that it’s a miracle that any survive; those that do are tough, sociopathic and accomplished liars. While exploring the Sanctuary's endless corridors, Cale and his friends Kleist and Vague Henri stumble upon a senior Redeemer carefully eviscerating a living girl, while another awaits the same fate. Appalled, the boys rescue the survivor, Riba, and flee thanks to Cale’s extraordinary talents. They arrive at Memphis, a sort of waterless Venice ruled by a clan of Italianate Teutonic knights called the Materazzi. Having no breeding or social standing whatsoever, the fugitives are treated with contempt even after Cale easily defeats Conn, the Materazzi’s finest young warrior. Eventually, after innumerable complications, for reasons that only become clear at the end, the Redeemers move against Memphis. During all this, the narrative tone switches abruptly between boyish, avuncular, pedagogic, ironic and jocular. Hoffman carefully foreshadows events that never happen, then, having overlooked necessary facts, abruptly blurts them out or digresses for several pages. The randomly assembled, pseudo-medieval backdrop is stuffed with leering modern referents. Yet despite these gaping flaws, the plight of poor, tormented, invincible Cale beguiles, and the book’s true power is its utter unpredictability.
Judging by the hype, what the publisher hoped for was Lord of Harry Potter’s Dark Materials; what it actually secured is, in its own immodest way, engrossing enough.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-525-95131-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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