Humans fleeing an ecologically and socially collapsing Earth have founded a colony on Celestis, a planet that keeps one face turned toward its primary. The native Aboriginals were, apparently, enslaved by a second race, older and more powerful, known as demons, which the humans quickly decimated. To avoid re- enslavement, the Aboriginals accepted surgical and pharmacological intervention to make themselves more humanlike. But now a liberation movement arises among the natives—galvanized, incongruously, by what seems to be a demon. Young diplomat Simon Mayaram is ordered by his superior to attend celebrations at a remote country estate. During his visit, the estate is attacked by revolutionaries. Humans and altered Aboriginals are slaughtered; Simon is captured along with Katharine Styreme, the humanlike ``daughter'' of a wealthy Aboriginal, and conveyed to a prison on the dark side of the planet. Fortuitously, they manage to escape during an assault by anti-Aboriginal human terrorists. But without her drugs, Katharine begins to revert to her true nature, and she develops insights into the complex relationship between Aboriginals and demons—a relationship willfully misunderstood by Simon and his fellow humans because of its disturbingly close resemblance to human homosexual contact. Thoughtful, unsettling, and provocative; a pity that Park (The Cult of Loving Kindness, 1991, etc.) didn't develop the underlying ecological assumptions with greater rigor and clarity.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85899-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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 new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
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