A first-rate cast headlines this gleefully offbeat piece of speculative fiction.
Soldiers in a mysterious afterlife may be the only ones who can stop a sinister world-threatening force in Arnold’s debut SF/fantasy novel.
United States Army soldier Michael Rene Gostani dies in combat during the Vietnam War. He awakens in a bizarre place that’s seemingly made of his memories. In this apparent land of the dead, Michael discovers an astonishing ability: he can manipulate the environment and form new landscapes. Elsewhere, in the 25th century, Maven Kelly Pear and Sgt. Nathan Doss fight together on the war-torn planet Vitalia. Nathan takes them to a “planted” spaceship-turned-city to recover some “fancy” tech, but he’s really looking for his love, Stephanie, who has disappeared. Two decades prior, in the same spot, 20 million people likewise vanished in what’s called the Great Abduction. Through unforeseen circumstances, Kelly and Nathan wind up in the afterlife, though they aren’t dead. Neither are those 20 million missing individuals, a group the two soldiers are now in the position of potentially freeing from their apparent imprisonment. But they’re in Meridian, which is the otherworldly city that Michael Gostani has created. It’s not so far removed from the war Kelly and Nathan left behind on Vitalia: Another realm, entirely separate from Meridian, is at odds with Michael’s city. And something awful looms on the horizon—the Aberration, a vaguely described entity whose arrival in this afterlife is imminent and who’s reputedly dead set on “wiping out and absorbing all life.”
Obscurity reigns in Arnold’s often murky story—there’s a suggestion that Meridian is Heaven, Hell, and purgatory all rolled into one. This introduces an intriguing dilemma for Nathan, who, as a devoutly religious man, may view Michael as a god. Copious details of the afterlife are left cryptic, from the true nature of the Aberration is (or what it will become) and the ways Kelly and Nathan can combat it to the “humanoids,” both friendly and hostile, who continually pop up. Characters (including Michael) are baffled throughout, with the story offering little clarification. Michael’s abstruseness elevates the narrative tension, as readers may have trouble deciding whether or not he’s a villain. Fortunately, Kelly and Nathan, who have been friends for as long as they’ve been soldiers, ground the story (Kelly, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, is distraught over losing access to the drug helping her cope). In detailing the logic-defying city of Meridian, the author churns out chaotic descriptions brimming with a hodgepodge of images: “The cracking and swooshing sound of conflagration is met with sight of a devastated medieval world: wood and stone and plaster ablaze and flattened, half of a stone dome ceiling collapsed, pieces the size of houses falling and exploding on the ground, black smoke billowing.” The final act provides readers with many, if not all, the answers, and the narrative works as either an opening series installment or a standalone story.
A first-rate cast headlines this gleefully offbeat piece of speculative fiction.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798350900590
Page Count: 426
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.
After purchasing a dilapidated, century-old starship called the Destitute, Torian Razner discovers that the moss covering it is, in fact, a deeply sarcastic sentient computer with abandonment issues.
Torian’s sister, Celise, is dying. Determined to save her life by getting her to a distant planet with air she can breathe, Torian ignores her former captain Amelia Perrosk’s warning that it’s an impossible task (along with any romantic feelings she might have for Amelia). Using the only ionite bars she has to her name, Torian purchases an ancient, moss-covered alien starship that appears to be on its last legs, so to speak. She hardly expected the moss to be a sentient computer or for it to hold a century-old grudge against its former alien captain. Moss quickly proves itself to be acerbic, intelligent, and rightly angry after being having been left behind for 100 years by its former captain. The two form a reluctant and surprising alliance, Torian proving to Moss that not all captains are “dog-turd fungus,” and they both gradually evolve into the best versions of themselves, human or otherwise. It’s obvious from the early pages that Thorne has crafted a story tailored to fans of Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series and Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. Falling somewhere between the two, this is a delightful mashup of romance, found family, and a touch of violence as Moss grapples with its feelings about its former captain and the unexpected kindness that Torian shows. Sweet without being overly saccharine, it’s a book for readers who want the adventure that comes with the vastness of outer space without its harsher realities.
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414144
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bramble Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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