An intriguing, well-constructed thriller about a tech whiz on a journey of discovery.
A 20-something San Franciscan finds himself at the heart of cosmic drama in Roth’s SF series starter.
As the story opens, Cameron Maddock, a 26-year-old tech consultant, is talking with his ultrasophisticated, custom-designed artificial intelligence, Ego, about his day’s schedule. Most of the day will be devoted to a quick job that involves bluffing his way into the headquarters of the biotech company Bridgespan and hacking into the heart of their information network as a test of the company’s security. Cam, who’s always had “a mind for problem-solving,” is gifted at this kind of high-tech work—much to the chagrin of Bridgespan’s CTO, who hired him, and the company’s head of network security. After celebrating his successful job with his best friend, Tony Zhang, Cam proceeds the next day to his private workshop only to be alerted by Ego to the presence of two armed intruders back at his apartment—and their enigmatic “Boss,” a man named Tomás Aguilar, who seems unnervingly aware of Cam’s every move and is after him for unknown reasons. Even after Cam displays some unexpected combat skills—suddenly, he’s like “a video game character come to life”—the Boss is indefatigable in his pursuit, and Cam is soon propelled into a chase adventure that brings him in contact with a broader world than he’d ever imagined—one that involves alternate dimensions and the Gates between them. Over the course of this novel, Roth takes readers through all of this at a brisk pace and with a sense of momentum that keeps the pages turning. There are occasional rhetorical oddities along the way that can be a bit distracting; for example, the narration inconsistently refers to singular characters by plural pronouns, which can be particularly confusing in group action sequences. But the story presents a steady barrage of revelations that upend Cam’s life with a skill and a jumpy sense of humor that make the protagonist a fun character to root for. Readers will welcome the possibility of going on future adventures with him.
An intriguing, well-constructed thriller about a tech whiz on a journey of discovery.Pub Date: June 7, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 399
Publisher: Jetspace Studio
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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
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