Sharp characterizations set the groundwork for future books in this series.
In Roberts’ debut thriller, the first of a planned trilogy, an empath, who’s helping to develop a telepathy app, realizes that the person funding the project may have a sinister agenda.
Jon Gunnarson is at his aikido dojo when he hears a strange, distracting voice in his head that causes him to lose an important fight. He once had a telepathic connection to his late mother; after she died, he started forming telepathic links with others. Now, he only wants to disconnect from other people’s feelings, which incessantly cloud his head. He tells his aikido sparring partner, a Buddhist nun named Chodak Neema, about the voice; she thinks that she can help him, but she’s leaving that night to go to Bhutan. He can’t afford the trip, so he responds to an ad from a company that’s supposedly developing a meditation app in the South Asian country. Financing the development is Jeffrey Venn, who actually plans on peddling a telepathy app; he’s also currently under FBI investigation for internet fraud. British neuroscientist Ella Sandström is part of Venn’s team; she soon recognizes the harm that a functional telepathy app could cause if released to the general public. Venn, however, is already pushing to release his product on the market, disregarding the risks. His ultimate goal involves a nefarious act—and an app could conceivably hurt, or even kill, millions of people. Roberts delivers a commendable series launch that slowly establishes how its version of telepathy works (and gives it the fresh, chic moniker “tuning in”). There’s minimal action, but this short novel still moves briskly as it carefully molds its characters; Ella, for instance, is shown to be estranged from her teenage daughter, Jady, who blames her mom for her parents’ divorce. The story boasts some espionage as well, and Venn gets more menacing as the narrative progresses. But the book’s most impressive trait is its surprising moments of profundity: While trying to dip into happy people’s positive feelings, Jon sadly learns that most happiness is faked.
Sharp characterizations set the groundwork for future books in this series.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 132
Publisher: HighCrest Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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