This opening salvo of a new SF series alternates between intriguing and overwhelming.
An ordinary man finds himself a key combatant in a longtime battle between godlike beings in Edge’s SF novel.
Investigative journalist/hacker Kevin Touns stumbles across a shadowy group of powerful men known as the Pandekon and set on global domination. His friend and associate Hamster discovers that the Pandekon’s members are followers of an alien set on purging humanity from the planet. Kevin, his friend Griff, and Hamster become wanted men after they destroy a Pandekon facility in Paris. Kevin and Griff are captured by the Bereft, a group that protects the Terminus, a mysterious gateway through which souls pass to reach their next destination. Kevin is introduced to Mut, a “Mother of the Earth,” whose role is to protect humanity. Kevin is told that he’s actually Mut’s runaway son, Torch, and that his mission is to find a replacement body for the soul of his dying mother. Kevin now has to contend with crises caused by human zombies created by a bioengineered fungus, intergalactic vampires, and invading alien slavers. There is a lot to unpack in this first installment of the author’s Book of Xaal series. Like Kevin, the reader is constantly blindsided by confusing developments, which makes for a frustrating reading experience. Edge introduces far too many characters, settings, and events without sufficient context, making the narrative difficult to parse. The strength of Edge’s novel is its cast. Kevin/Torch is a man of mystery (“No one uses my formal name for reasons of anonymity, my friendships are mostly online rather than face to face these days. I am part of a small clandestine group…”) whose complicated history is skillfully doled out by the author. Griff and Hamster, his steady and colorful companions, are also well developed. Here’s hoping that all the setup Edge has crammed into this first volume will pay dividends in future entries.
This opening salvo of a new SF series alternates between intriguing and overwhelming.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798376513132
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2023
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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