This speculative Hollywood tale deftly questions the desirability of immortality.
A California detective searches for a serial killer who targets movie actors.
In this novel by Moore (The Merchant, the Janissary and the Corsair, 2017, etc.), Welles Lang is the greatest filmmaker of his generation. Actors both famous and unknown are dying to work with Welles. He and his collaborator Dr. Jack Crowley have now created the next immersive technology for filming, beyond 3-D, beyond holograms. There’s just one catch: This innovation does more than capture actors’ performances. It literally sucks the life essence out of them and into Welles’ magic box. So desiccated bodies of actors start popping up around Hollywood, sparking an investigation by Detective William Walker. Welles has another problem. Financing for this new technology came from a Croatian gangster, Ivan Blodovik, who expects Welles to turn his mistress, Davorka Stanich, into a star. Enemies of Welles lead the IRS and FBI to him and Ivan. Frustrated by Welles’ indifference, Ivan sends one of his thugs, Vitaly “Bob” Cervenko, to lean on him. But the filmmaker turns his machine on Bob, converting him into an avatar and his new enforcer. Considering himself beyond conventional morality, Welles collects more and more actors in his magic box, staying just ahead of the police trying to solve the increasing number of murders. Moore has created an entrancing cautionary tale of what happens when technology outpaces society’s ethical boundaries for it. In Welles’ mind, art trumps all, with the virtual actors just fodder for his visions as he plugs them into new roles at will. His partner in crime, Ivan, also thought himself above the law. Bob is the book’s redemptive character, going from darkness to light and eventually aiding the law in the pursuit of Welles and Ivan. The futuristic novel is fairly well-paced, although including lengthy segments that Welles is filming slows down the story without adding much to the narrative. But the author smoothly juggles a large cast of characters and various locations, which helps to propel the plot. The result is a thought-provoking take on the traditional Hollywood success story.
This speculative Hollywood tale deftly questions the desirability of immortality.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-978022-38-6
Page Count: 310
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2019
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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