An earnest and stark tale of the human will to survive and its consequences.
Buncic offers a post-apocalyptic novel about life in an isolated community.
A woman named Una is the eldest adult child of two people who escaped to a remote, uninhabited island.Life in mainstream society became unlivable due to disease, dwindling resources, and hotter weather, so Una’s mother and father decided to take their chances in a far-off place. Una, who’s now known as Matron to those around her, is in charge of watching out for other inhabitants, and their environment requires lots of attention. Island life is challenging; the days get dangerously hot, water must be used with care, and rats and roaches are considered a boon to any meal. Despite its austere beginnings, the group expands, and new methods are developed for such things as obtaining fresh water. The food improves to the point where people no longer want to eat roaches, but with this success comes conflict. As one character points out, the problem with technology is that “People quickly get spoilt by the comfort it provides.” What if some people care less about their work? How will the community punish those who steal? This examination of life in a remote location sheds light on what it means to adapt; after all, most of the people on the island don’t know anything about life beyond the island’s borders and are willing to do things that their parents would likely never have done. For instance, the novel makes clear that the idea of breeding roaches for food is a smart and practical decision even if it is disgusting to many readers’ sensibilities; the characters’ reactions to other island issues are similarly thought-provoking. The fallout of such advancements is predictable, however; as one might expect, the people want progressively better things, and the story’s excitement comes not from how power structures develop from these advances but how terrible dangers emerge from them. The work makes clear that even a plentiful supply of food doesn’t always secure a comfortable future.
An earnest and stark tale of the human will to survive and its consequences.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-473-50686-5
Page Count: 348
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2022
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 beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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PERSPECTIVES
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