Melodramatic and forgettable.
A legendary figure–turned–paranormal investigator protects Prohibition-era Chicago against otherworldly influences in the first of a series by an author best known for his epic fantasy (The Horned Blade, 2015).
Sixteen hundred years ago, Georgius, a soldier in the Roman emperor Diocletian’s army, slew the dragon charged with guarding the Gate separating our world from Feirie. After the emperor executed Georgius, aka St. George, for refusing to repudiate his Christianity, heaven returned George—now housing the spirit of the resentful dragon—to life and made him Gatekeeper. In the 1920s, Georgius, now calling himself Nick Medea, lives in Chicago and fends off Feirie incursions. As Oberon, former Feirie ruler, prepares to merge the two realities, Nick must combat the sinister plot while fighting his feelings for Claryce Simone, the latest incarnation of his much-reincarnated beloved, Princess Cleolinda. The market is flooded with urban fantasy noirs starring investigators with tortured pasts, burdened with a destiny and knowledge of the supernatural that they must hide from the mundanes. The usual coping mechanisms are heavy doses of snark and cynical humor. Nick breaks this mold by being a gloomy, pompous buzzkill. His relationship with Claryce is rather thinly drawn; we don't know anything about Cleolinda other than that he loved her and she dies a lot. Nick also makes a point of saying that he's falling for Claryce for herself, not for her previous selves, but Claryce is such a flat character (we know she's brave, persistent, and a good shot, but she still barely registers) that it's hard for the reader to share Nick's perspective. The time period and location should add color to the story, but mostly they serve as a source of cookie-cutter mob thugs to menace Nick and his friends.
Melodramatic and forgettable.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63388-136-5
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Pyr/Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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