A bloody, blistering novel of war and sacrifice set in a time of actual monsters.
An augmented soldier fights against apocalyptic nightmares in a brutal war to save humanity.
Debut novelist Ashcroft unleashes a witch’s brew of macabre, Lovecraft-ian imagery in this strange horror novel that couches a heavy emotional arc within its video game–like setting. Our narrator is former LAPD officer–turned–cybernetic survivor Theo Adams circa 2051, in the last days of the human race. Seven years earlier a “Hollow War” decimated Earth’s population with rail guns and viruses before unleashing the terrifying creatures of the Harvest, known to survivors as the Scourge: “The fiends, bruisers, tender-monkeys, huddlers, snatch rats, cabritas. Rape, slaughter, feast. You don’t need to be reminded in detail. You got organized. You got weapons and established perimeters.” Now some 50,000 scarred survivors remain in the Santa Monica Collective, a ragtag, militarized band of soldiers barely winning skirmishes with the monsters they face. On one side of this conflict there is the Megarothke, the unstoppable, spiderlike killing machine who leads the Scourge, aided by a human quisling called The Recluse. On the other, the Orbital, a desperate but well-armed group of survivors who have fled to orbit but yearn to return to Earth. In flashbacks, Theo takes us back 10 years to his troubled, soon-to-end marriage, whose only saving grace is his daughter, Amelie. The situation is made worse when his ex becomes entangled with a cult called the Trans-Sentience movement, where a splinter faction wants to use a kind of sorcery to summon a powerful demon called the Lightbringer. It’s some heavy mythology-building but Ashcroft’s skillful blend of noir vocabulary and cyberpunk aesthetics work to its advantage. Between its robotic doppelgängers, mutated monsters, and actual ray guns, the book manages to take a hard look at what it means to be human in an age when humanity barely remains.
A bloody, blistering novel of war and sacrifice set in a time of actual monsters.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-946487-06-3
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Cinestate
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
A shelf-cracking sequel to The Great and Secret Show (1989) that begs the question: Is this sort of hermetic dross really worth the felling of defenseless forests? It's back to the shores of Quiddity, the undulant dream sea that separates worldly Cosm (a.k.a. the Helter Incendo, where we Sapas Humana live) from the trippy Metacosm (home of fabulous beings with names like Noah and King Texas), for a restaging of the epic struggle for the Art, major magic that was last coveted by the infinitely wicked Kissoon, who sponsored the previous battle to control this transcendental force. Itinerant biker chick Tesla Bombeck leads the way to Everville, a sleepy small town in Oregon about to be savaged by the passage of the Iad Uroboros—a mindless, evil juggernaut bent to Kissoon's will—through a rip in the veil between Cosm and Metacosm. Determined to thwart Kissoon, Bombeck enlists the aid of several cronies, among them Catholic gumshoe Harry D'Amour, a tattooed student of necromancy; computer archivist Nathan Grillo, guardian of the novel's paranormal Internet; and Phoebe Cobb, an Everville resident whose lover, Joe Flicker, has fled to Quiddity. A vast array of freaks and oddities—moody ghosts, supernatural impresarios, serpents molded from feces—crops up as everyone lurches toward the apocalypse at Everville's crossroads (there's even a vigilante marching band). Flogging his readers with one limp cliffhanger after another and concocting increasingly more baroque pseudo-religious explanations for each new image of wonder or shock that floats, flies, drifts, swims, or slithers into view—while relinquishing a lot of the sex and gore that have enlivened other efforts—Barker gasses on to a feeble climax before abandoning the story to its doleful collapse. The man should have his pens and paper taken away before he can get to thinking about a trilogy. Everville? Never mind.
Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-017716-0
Page Count: 704
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
Turgid—sentences swell into paragraphs, paragraphs bloat into pages, pages expand to fill entire chapters—though empty of...
Completing the Prestimion trilogy and, we’re told, bringing the entire fantasy/SF Majipoor Cycle (Lord Prestimion, 2000, etc.) to a conclusion. On the giant planet Majipoor, humans live alongside dozens of alien species; all are ruled by a human Coronal (King) and Pontifex (Emperor). The current Pontifex, old Confalume, may or may not be dying, so the present Coronal, Prestimion, may or may not soon become Pontifex; and Prestimion’s anointed successor, Dekkeret, may or may not be crowned Coronal. Dekkeret may or may not marry his lover, Fulkari, who’s reluctant to become the wife of a Coronal. So much for narrative tension. Meanwhile, on the continent of Zimroel, where 20 years ago Prestimion crushed the rebellious Procurator Dantirya Sambail in a ruinous war, Mandralisca, Sambail’s evil henchman, incites another revolt by making extravagant promises to Sambail’s five stupid, oafish sons. Mandralisca has obtained an improved version of the mind-coercing helmets used to great effect in the previous struggle. This time, though, Mandralisca intends to strike at Prestimion’s family, driving them to despair, madness, and death. In due course, Confalume dies, and Prestimion’s new battle with Mandralisca begins.
Turgid—sentences swell into paragraphs, paragraphs bloat into pages, pages expand to fill entire chapters—though empty of wit, zest, or creativity: the terminal episode in a hitherto interminable series subsides with no more than a tiny gasp.Pub Date: June 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-105171-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Eos/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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