A grand entertainment, as ever with Bennett’s richly imaginative yarns.
Things are not what they seem in a place where leviathans roam the land and plots against the empire flourish.
Part fantasy, part procedural, the second installment in Bennett’s Shadow of the Leviathan series—following The Tainted Cup (2024)—finds Dinios Kol, the much put upon assistant to investigator Ana Dolabra (rhymes with abracadabra), investigating a murder on the far edges of the Empire of Khanum. Ana is “a woman so brilliant [that] she lives most of her days blindfolded and rarely leaves her rooms, for fear that common life shall overwhelm her mind.” That leaves it up to Din to try to piece together what happened to an unfortunate servant of the empire whose body is turning up in bits and pieces—understandable, perhaps, since the man worked for the tax division of the imperial treasury, “here to confer with the king of Yarrow on high imperial business,” as a local flatfoot, Malo, tells him. It’s a grisly affair, all severed hands and disembowelment, “as if all the organs had been scooped out by a giant spoon,” and Din has a sensitive tummy. That drop of corruption in the title has nothing to do with the fact that when Ana arrives on the scene she feasts on a pile of raw shellfish. No, the corruption has to do with the ability of the Empire’s folks to alter bodies with all manner of tools and potions and such, and when they concoct a plan to inject “ossuary moss” into bone marrow to keep Din and his fellow “engravers” from going bonkers, Ana’s antennae go up—and even more so when the aforementioned king turns up “dead as a fucking boiled scallop.” Red herrings—some in various stages of rot—abound as Ana, Din, and Malo sort out all the nefarious doings.
A grand entertainment, as ever with Bennett’s richly imaginative yarns.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780593723821
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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