An inventive and action-packed, if sometimes uneven, SF finale.
This third installment of an SF trilogy focuses on a war between aliens and humans.
Raised as humans, four brothers—Joe, Franc, Paul, and Bart—received the shocking news that they were clones of an alien race and that this species was bent on humanity’s destruction. Called the Dark Ones, they are truly something to be feared. But it seems not all of them are evil. The brothers’ own father helped set up seven safe havens on Earth, though the siblings didn’t believe that all of the refuges would survive. Now, to everyone’s surprise and suspicion, a group appears in Sicily claiming to be from Denmark, one of the havens thought lost in a great battle. Joe is already wary of the band, but then he notices that one of the travelers bears a sign that he is a Dark One. It is Typhon, son of the Dark Ones’ leader and the very alien who was rumored to have destroyed the Denmark refuge. Typhon claims to have seen the error of his ways during the battle and turned against his own people to defend the haven: “It may be hard to believe, but I would fight to the death to protect you and your beliefs.” Joe cannot be sure that Typhon has turned over a new leaf, but bigger clashes are coming, and the entire planet is at stake. Humans will eventually need to prepare for a full-scale invasion. As this volume is the finale of Edge’s trilogy, it is highly recommended that readers peruse the first two novels to fully grasp the intriguing saga. The author does his best to catch readers up in the installment’s beginning, but the infodump will be overwhelming and exhausting for those unfamiliar with the series. This confusion is made worse by the fact that several characters are often talking in the same paragraph in the story. Readers may be baffled as to who is speaking, especially if they are not well acquainted with the large cast. Still, SF fans willing to put in the effort will be rewarded with innovative worldbuilding and an epic, high-stakes battle that delivers plenty of action and thrills. This is a gripping, wide-ranging tale that involves journal excerpts, faith, healing, monks, cloned wolves, uneasy alliances, and various aliens, weapons, and spaceships.
An inventive and action-packed, if sometimes uneven, SF finale.Pub Date: March 28, 2022
ISBN: 979-8421346050
Page Count: 493
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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