by Steven Bereznai ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2022
Wildly entertaining, with a thoughtful layer under all the villainous boasting and ka-pow action.
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In this SF sequel, a supervillain perfects his scheme to destroy the world—but meets surprising opposition.
As described in Generation Manifestation (2021), a future society consists of worker-bee DNA regulars and Supergenics. Regular teens who successfully face Testing for superpower potential are called Generation Manifestation, or Gen M. One such teen was the socially awkward misfit narrator, now a resentful adult calling himself Doctor BetterThan. He’s amassed a huge collection of sophisticated weaponry in his elaborate ocean lair. His first goal is to display his utter supremacy (“Forget Gen M. I’m Gen Me”) and his second is to destroy all life on Earth. Thanks to his ability to rewind and restart time, he’s now able to annihilate a phalanx of superheroes, finally deploying his death ray. “I’m the only living being on the planet. I win,” he crows. At first, post-apocalyptic life is everything he’d hoped for: eating unlimited Twinkies and writing his memoir. But a spoiler arrives in the formidable form of Mairī Lin Monroe, a pink, breathy-voiced robot who, with a cybernetic army, vies for planetary domination. Though an enemy, she’s intriguing, and while the Doctor could just rewind time again—what would he lose by winning again? In his second Gen M novel, Bereznai makes every story element an over-the-top, operatic, and highly detailed extravaganza, from superhero-movie action scenes to a sequence that shows the Doctor gloating over his control board: “A dizzying array of toggles, switches, and dials that tease me with silent siren calls, begging me to flick and press them.” The author makes the most of the Doctor’s insufferable enjoyment of winning before complications rightfully ensue. The story also provides intriguing psychological reflections (why does the Doctor’s helper robot so resemble his overbearing mother?) and unexpected romance.
Wildly entertaining, with a thoughtful layer under all the villainous boasting and ka-pow action.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-989055-06-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Jambor Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Andy Weir ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 4, 2021
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
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New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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by Andy Weir ; illustrated by Sarah Andersen
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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