This is a funny, inventive exploration of the dangers inherent in our overmedicated culture. Readers who enjoy a dash of...
Browne’s (Big Egos, 2013, etc.) latest novel is a social-satire–meets–amateur-superhero saga that deftly skewers the money-grubbing slickness of the pharmaceutical industry—as well as American culture’s propensity to pop a pill for absolutely anything that ails us, regardless of how outrageously unpredictable the side effects may be.
Our narrator is Lloyd Prescott, an aimless, slacker-ish 30-year-old on New York City’s Lower East Side who abandoned his stalled marketing career five years ago after realizing there was money to be made in volunteering as a guinea pig for experimental phase 1 clinical drug trials. Having endured more than 150 drug trials in that time, Lloyd has amassed a misfit crew of five fellow professional–guinea-pig buddies who meet up monthly to compare notes on the various meds' side effects. Lloyd has picked up on something bizarre during his current cycle: whenever he yawns, people around him fall asleep, as if the side effects he’s enduring are being passed on to regular folks around him. His friends are noticing similar issues—for instance, when one of them, Vic, feels nauseous, a woman near him suddenly vomits, and another, Randy, appears to be making people mysteriously break out in rashes. Perplexed, they set out to determine what, exactly, is behind this madness. The fun supernatural-lite themes kick into gear as the gang learns that the problem may be bigger and stranger than they’d imagined; enter a gaggle of evil foes with “powers” similar to those of Lloyd and company. Browne’s voice is smart, engaging, and approachable, and Lloyd is a guy we’ve all met in real life: you know, that one in a five-year domestic partnership who remains terrified of settling down; the dude who’d rather panhandle on the street than sell his soul by working for The Man.
This is a funny, inventive exploration of the dangers inherent in our overmedicated culture. Readers who enjoy a dash of sharp wit with their comic-book shenanigans should enjoy tagging along on Lloyd’s everyday-superhero exploits.Pub Date: March 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1174-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2015
PROFILES
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 fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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