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
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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