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
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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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