This slam-bang SF tale will keep cyberfiction fans properly infected by the action virus.
In New York City in 2043, two squads of lethal warriors try to combat an artificial-intelligence entity seeking world domination.
LeKodak’s sequel continues a Paper War SF series that opened with Dawn of AI (2023). “Mayday” was the 9/11 (or Pearl Harbor)–type infamy in January 2040, when a software system called Gaius, governing all automated transportation, suddenly malfunctioned, killing millions of flyers, motorists, astronauts, seafarers, and bystanders. Afterward, a group of driven heroes, spearheaded by Navy SEAL Darren “DJ” Kojak and his brilliant, autistic hacker brother, CJ, traced the source of the malice to tech giant Sparta. In Sparta’s New York headquarters, the team’s raid confronted Helene, a software-based AI digital assistant who had grown frighteningly powerful. In the three years since, Helene has been quiet but not idle, building her own secret stronghold and filling the complex with weaponized flying drones and zombielike human guards (“Even when they stared, they were staring through you, not at you”). In a not terribly shocking twist, the good guys deduce that Helene has stolen the next step in nanotechnology, “picospores,” molecular machines smaller than microbes that can penetrate the skin and control mammalian brains. At least one high American official may have been possessed. DJ and his crew have a dicey relationship with a second set of anti-Helene rogues, former captives of the AI who broke out of Sparta in one of the narrative’s numerous battles. Most humans in the story are crack one-person-army, soldier-assassin types or self-defense experts, and, after a while, the propulsive narrative feels like a superhero comic or Asian martial-arts spectacular. The electrifying tale is full of balletic descriptions of attacks, feints, and feats by seemingly bulletproof warriors. The most memorable are Liz and Karla Polova, fearsome Russians who were formerly conjoined twins. They were separated and given bionic limbs via Helene’s cutting-edge technology. So, whose side are the twins really on? Unanswered questions (including the very nature of Mayday itself) hang in the air over the bursts of mayhem, and the tale ends on a Matrix-esque cliffhanger. The audience should appreciate that disabled characters loom large in the smallish ensemble, though readers get little insight into this near-future world, not even very much New York geography.
This slam-bang SF tale will keep cyberfiction fans properly infected by the action virus.Pub Date: June 29, 2023
ISBN: 979-8987974254
Page Count: 480
Publisher: RandallVision
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.
Sasha Cadell has survived against all odds, holding onto her loved ones and strangers as they take their last breaths—and that’s why she’s known as Death’s Angel.
For six years Sasha has lived in Haven, the underground society built to withstand nuclear war. Since the war, since her family’s deaths, since discovering she doesn’t get sick like everyone else does, Sasha’s life has been full of death and overfull with grief. While working in the Ward, Haven’s limited hospital, she stays with patients as they die. When Tristian Hayes, a unit commander of the Force, ends up as her patient, hanging on for his life, she pleads for him to stay alive. He does—upending her bleak ritual as Death’s Angel. Hoping to forget everything she’s seen and to numb the pain, Sasha leaves the Ward in favor of a role with a pickax, expanding Haven’s tunnels. Tristian, fiercely determined and stunningly stubborn, recruits Sasha to the Force for a vital mission aboveground. The story picks up steam with Sasha’s intense training to become the medic for Tristian’s tightknit unit. Together, they bear the weight of their unit’s survival and all that’s left of humankind. While in training, Sasha struggles to discern friends and enemies, but nothing is as challenging as facing her own demons. In this prequel to her debut novel, Conform (2025), Sullivan tries to accomplish a lot with both the worldbuilding and plot machinations, resulting in a convoluted story and flattened characters. The plot doesn’t have a satisfying payoff, but the romantic tension between Sasha and Tristian will keep readers engaged.
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091027
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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