Vast-scale space-opera/combat adventure ably handled by a genre master and commander.
In this fifth installment of a far-future SF series, a well-connected Earth Intelligence Service agent gets tested to the limits of his resources when a vicious alien empire launches an invasion of Earth.
The setting is the year 4608. Sirius Kade, Renneberg’s recurring hero and first-person narrator, is a top Earth Intelligence agent, once masquerading as a humble merchant. Now, he’s no longer an undercover operative because of his Forrest Gump–like tendency to be at the center of all the action in intergalactic intrigue and warfare between numerous, highly advanced alien cultures and races. (Sirius also happens to be the brother of a prominent space pirate.) After having finally revealed his hidden life to his true love, Marie, Sirius is enjoying a vacation idyll in the French Alps, where he plans to propose. Then, a long-awaited catastrophe erupts. Earth is invaded in a blitzkrieg action by the series’ primary menace, the Spawn, a pitiless, amphibian-style race whose robotic soldiers and invulnerable, armored ships are paving their way to conquering the cosmos. Earth is the latest Spawn beachhead to be easily defeated, and Sirius, one of the alien empire’s most wanted enemies, sacrifices his freedom to keep Marie safe. How can he (and the planet) get out of this jam? These momentous events occur in the opening chapters. Renneberg’s skillful prose then sends readers on fairly breathless leaps from one prison planet hell world or hopelessly outmatched/outgunned combat scenario to another. This rousing tale is for readers who may have complained that Star Wars did not have enough star wars. But there is actually intriguing intellectual content (and breathing space) in these pages, as some beings in the supporting cast argue for a more enlightened path and claim that even the ravenous Spawn are not beyond redemption. The characters hit proper larger-than-life notes (though Sirius is a bit of a standard smart/tough guy). A relatively minor complaint is that the author’s deliriously variegated ensemble of outer-space creatures and civilizations often boil down to anthropomorphized versions of recognizable Earth fauna (snakes, pongids, beetles), bringing along their associated personalities and characteristics. But none of that should stop fans turning the pages at rates approaching luminal speed.
Vast-scale space-opera/combat adventure ably handled by a genre master and commander.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9941840-8-5
Page Count: 467
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 19, 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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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