Is Munson’s second novel (The November Criminals, 2010) an unsatisfyingly resolved stand-alone or the prelude to a larger...
Some teenagers joy ride; some join gangs; some do drugs; and some, apparently, do magic.
For hundreds of years, the powerful magicians who use wands and other tools (the “assholes” of the title) have repressed the much smaller group who perform magic with will alone. Michael Wood is a somewhat thuggish teen who might possibly have a decent heart and brain buried beneath his hormonal and violent impulses. When his odd classmate Hob Callahan introduces him to the magical minority and their struggle with the assholes, Michael signs on with barely a second thought. The conflict doesn’t really surface in the present day until Hob and his pals steal a number of magical objects, prompting a brutal campaign of retaliation. The philosophical difference between the two cabals seems to be couched as a form of class warfare, but that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. True, the assholes are based at a snooty prep school, but their adversaries consist of two wealthy adults and a few kids living in pricey New York City apartments, some of whom attend a Catholic school with tuition of $30,000 a year. There’s even a mix of racial and religious backgrounds on both sides. The war’s antecedents are steeped in high tragedy, but the modern conflict feels petty. It’s hard to tell whether Michael and his companions have any true sense of allegiance to a higher cause, and his crush, Alabama, is as happy to recklessly use a gun as to employ magic to commit mayhem. Perhaps the behavior (and the annoyingly choppy sentence fragments of Michael’s first-person narration) is meant to serve as an insight into the chaotic nature of the teenage mind, set against the occasionally beautifully described, hallucinatory milieu of the magical world, but it all seems pointless.
Is Munson’s second novel (The November Criminals, 2010) an unsatisfyingly resolved stand-alone or the prelude to a larger series? It doesn't really matter.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-2774-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wendig is clearly wrestling with some of the demons of our time, resulting in a story that is ambitious, bold, and worthy of...
What if the only way to save humanity was to lose almost everyone?
This was kind of inevitable: Wendig (Vultures, 2019, etc.) wrestles with a magnum opus that grapples with culture, science, faith, and our collective anxiety while delivering an epic equal to Steven King’s The Stand (1978). While it’s not advertised as an entry in Wendig’s horrifying Future Proof universe that includes Zer0es (2015) and Invasive (2016), it’s the spiritual next step in the author’s deconstruction of not only our culture, but the awful things that we—humanity—are capable of delivering with our current technology and terrible will. The setup is vividly cinematic: After a comet passes near Earth, a sleeping sickness takes hold, causing victims to start wandering in the same direction, barring those who spontaneously, um, explode. Simultaneously, a government-built, wickedly terrifying AI called Black Swan tells its minders that a disgraced scientist named Benji Ray might be the key to solving the mystery illness. Wendig breaks out a huge cast that includes Benji’s boss, Sadie Emeka; a rock star who’s a nod to King’s Springsteen-esque Larry Underwood; a pair of sisters—one of whom is part of the “herd” of sleepwalkers and one who identifies as a “shepherd” tending to the sick; and Matthew Bird, who leads the faithful at God’s Light Church and who struggles with a world in which technology itself can become either God or the devil incarnate. Anyone who’s touched on Wendig’s oeuvre, let alone his lively social media presence, knows he’s a full-voiced political creature who’s less concerned with left and right than the chasm between right and wrong, and that impulse is fully on display here. Parsing the plot isn’t really critical—Wendig has stretched his considerable talents beyond the hyperkinetic horror that is his wheelhouse to deliver a story about survival that’s not just about you and me, but all of us, together.
Wendig is clearly wrestling with some of the demons of our time, resulting in a story that is ambitious, bold, and worthy of attention.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-18210-5
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Satisfying on all levels of the reading experience: thrilling, emotionally resonant, and cerebral. Escape to Witch Mountain...
The product of a long-running alchemical experiment, twins Roger and Dodger struggle to understand their unique circumstances and gain control over them.
In the late 19th century, ambitious young alchemist Asphodel Baker tried to rewrite reality to create a better world. She set in motion a long-range plan to incarnate the alchemical Doctrine of Ethos, encoding her scheme in a series of children’s books destined to become classics. In the present day, the considerably more ruthless James Reed, who is her creation and her killer, breeds twins designed to each incarnate half of the Doctrine; once they have fully matured, united, and manifested as “the living force that holds the universe together,” he will seize their power to control everything. Failed experiments are terminated. Roger Middleton, brilliant with languages, develops a strange telepathic connection with Dodger Cheswich, a math genius living across the country from him. Despite all of Reed’s brutal and covert efforts to keep the pair apart so their abilities will flower fully, they cannot help re-encountering each other and then separating in the wake of tragedy. Their attempts to avoid becoming one of Reed’s failures force them to draw upon their more arcane powers: Roger can persuade people—and reality itself—to bend to his wishes, while Dodger can actually reverse time back to a certain fixed point. With the help of Erin, the living incarnation of Order, they must craft the timeline that allows them to survive long enough to realize their potential. Books that include magic range across a spectrum that puts rules-based, logical magic on one end and serendipitous magic with no obvious cause or structure on the other. This book falls intriguingly far on the logic end; with its experiments and protocols, it redefines what is typically meant by science fantasy. If there’s a flaw in McGuire's (That Ain’t Witchcraft, 2019, etc.) gripping story, it’s that it isn't clear how Reed could really gain complete control over the Doctrine long term, nor why Reed’s followers actually believe that he would cede any of the Doctrine’s power were he to gain it.
Satisfying on all levels of the reading experience: thrilling, emotionally resonant, and cerebral. Escape to Witch Mountain for grown-ups.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-19552-4
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
