A slow-moving but absorbing tale of a near-future world that has more than its share of troubles.
In Kroll’s SF novel, the second in a series, a mid-21st-century world deals with the fallout of a virus that’s infected a network linking human brains.
Directed Neuroplasticity Therapy (DNT) scans have ushered in a world free of crime. But that quickly changed when alleged cyber-terrorist Robert Kasparian released a virus into the DNT network. Doing so turned a handful of people into damaged “Partials” who are currently “suspended in deep comas and incapable of functioning.” As the wary public starts to avoid periodic DNT scans, violence and crime surge across the globe. Certainly not helping matters is Justin Kasparian, who’s responsible for his brother Robert’s incarceration and is leading the charge against the International Institute of Health and Data (although the virus has been “reversed,” the IIHD wants to alleviate widespread panic by rolling out a new version of DNT). The Institute sends physician Robin Pilgrim and others to examine the Partials in Outer Sydney, where they learn that the Partials aren’t exactly what they seem. Meanwhile, two relatively new groups each vie for acceptance: sentient robots (along with species like dolphins and ravens), who want the same rights as humans, and “Octavers,” humans who’ve developed such psychic abilities as remote viewing. Some people have trouble believing in the abilities of the latter, while others form a movement called Humans First and actively protest the robots (“If it doesn’t bleed, it’s not alive,” reads a protester’s sign). Will a return to Directed Neuroplasticity Therapy once again bring order to the human population? Or will Humans Firsters, including Justin, coax others into distrusting anything that the IIHD has its hands in?
Kroll’s sophomore installment, like its predecessor, zeroes in on a curious assembly of characters. Saul Mateus, a former circus performer and an ex-technician at the DNT facility in Sydney, starts a potential romance with an eclectic Aussie local named Selkie. Arnold Dreyblatt, a camera operator for a streaming news service who covers a Humans First rally, is practically obsessed with getting the perfect shot. Even the seemingly minor characters (like Arnold) have notable connections to everything that’s going on around the globe. The cast takes precedence over plot progression; in Justin’s subplot, he feels insignificant compared to fellow Humans Firsters Karina Volnitskaya Abramovich and Jeffrey Schroeder, despite being the movement’s “face.” The author skillfully weaves topical issues into the narrative: Humans vehemently object to groups for no discernible reason aside from the fact that they’re different or something new that they don’t understand. The futuristic tech is deftly detailed, and Kroll is adept at staging relatable scenes, like a crowd’s reaction to hearing good news: “It was as if someone had set off a train of firecrackers in the crowd.” As the story continues, readers learn more about the Octavers, communicative animals, and one self-aware robot who turns villainous. By the end, while some characters’ fates are left in the air, there’s no question which way the story is headed in the third installment.
A slow-moving but absorbing tale of a near-future world that has more than its share of troubles.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9798901740101
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2026
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
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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