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
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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