A lively, refreshing, and endlessly entertaining post-apocalyptic tale.
In this fantasy/SF debut, futuristic soldiers of varying alliances fight one another to get their hands on a mysterious device.
The Global Union rules nearly every region on an Earth devastated by nuclear World War III. Capt. Tressa Ladovitch’s latest mission for the Coalition Intelligence Agency is recovering sensitive information in GU–controlled territory. The key element of this operation is securing an enigmatic object called the Cube. Sadly, a stranger has already compromised Tressa, who needs the Cube to trade for her kidnapped daughter, whom she gave up for adoption two decades ago. Tressa and three fellow soldiers double-cross the rest of the team post-mission and make off with the device. Though left for dead, the team leader, Cmdr. Cayden Battle, survives. His new goal, with the assistance of two Coalition soldiers, is taking the Cube from Tressa. Meanwhile, the GU’s Imperial High Command Gen. Saigo Takamori sends former GU spy and bounty hunter Sateria Ritch to retrieve the object. He promises to commute her life sentence in prison if she succeeds. As a bonus, she may be able to get revenge on Cayden, the lover she believes betrayed her years earlier. Saigo, who’s likely one of the Desani (Angels in human form that entered Earth via a dimensional portal), also has at his disposal cybernetic Iterations, or clones. So as Cayden’s new team chases Tressa and her comrades, Sateria and GU forces are in pursuit of both groups, spawning a plethora of confrontations.
Royster’s cross-genre story teems with action, sprightly characters, and chic technology. Cayden is particularly intriguing. He’s a Desani, but unlike others of his kind, he was “borne of flesh and blood.” He moreover brandishes a katana and uses his Desani powers to anticipate threats even in combat. Character backstories are also engaging, from details on Cayden’s reputed betrayal of Sateria to the reason Tressa gave up her child. While the author doesn’t meticulously describe all the novel’s tech, most of the gadgets don’t need a lot of details, like holo-naculars and the “changer” hoverbike that converts into a “slick snowmobile variant.” Much of this tech shows up in the book’s myriad action sequences. These exhilarating scenes rarely let up; in one extended bit, Cayden and Coalition soldiers are caught in an aircraft chase with GU’s soldier-esque Knights that eventually moves to snow-covered ground for laser gunfights and fisticuffs. Concise prose helps energize these scenes: “Cayden felt another laser blast coming toward them. He banked slightly, careful not to crash into the mountainside. He punched the exhaust and let out a plume of smoke that blanketed the cavern. It blinded the Cobra, causing the pilot to lose control and collide into the side of the rock, rendering the formidable attack jet a ball of flame.” It seems that Royster intends this novel to launch a series. Accordingly, not everything is resolved by the end, with questions lingering and some characters in peril. But this action-packed story will surely have readers pining for a sequel.
A lively, refreshing, and endlessly entertaining post-apocalyptic tale.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 249
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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