An intelligent, lively thriller.
Hobbs’ (Entangled Realms, 2013) follow-up novel explores the life of a girl with a genius intellect and other remarkable gifts that some would kill to attain.
As two young, single members of a small scientific research team in Antarctica, Susan Macaulay and Nate Stewart quickly form a romantic relationship. After the project ends and they return to their respective lives, Susan is stunned to learn that she’s pregnant. Any doubts or fears she has, however, quickly dissolve at Nate’s elated reaction to the news. When their daughter Fiona is born, Susan and Nate experience fears and doubts of a different kind. Fiona’s internal organs are slightly misplaced, and she has stunningly green eyes. Not only that, but her intelligence develops at an unprecedented rate. Could it have something to do with that mysterious—and classified—green sphere they discovered in the Antarctic? Fiona is, in all other respects, perfectly healthy, so the family tries to pursue a normal life. But people keep interfering: all family members, including Fiona’s dog, must submit to frequent medical tests. More than that, they discover that a trusted friend and adviser has been secretly monitoring and reporting on them to a powerful, clandestine agency called the Channel. With help, the family escapes into hiding. But their safety and anonymity are fleeting, and eventually Fiona must separate from her parents and trust strangers to help her evade the Channel and another, even more sinister group called the Others. From the opening scenes of a terrifying plane landing, Hobbs keeps readers on their toes with thrills and breakneck pacing. But it’s not just a fun ride; he provides technical information about myriad topics including aviation, meditation, ice crevasse rescues, espionage, and quantum mechanics. Fortunately, only a few things pull readers out of the story. For example, the dialogue, though naturalistic, is largely rational and controlled, which may leave some readers wishing more emotional outbursts or personality quirks were thrown in to punctuate the tense atmosphere. Also, some terms, such as percipience and eidetic, are used with notable frequency. These minor issues aside, Hobbs provides readers with a gripping, technologically compelling read that should earn him appreciative fans.
An intelligent, lively thriller.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1496971647
Page Count: 340
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
