A sublimely unusual tale of a man’s dementia or, perhaps, his awakening.
A newly retired NYPD cop moves to the California desert and experiences culture shock—with hippies and UFO sightings that may be driving him crazy—in this mystery.
While he’s off duty, Lt. Paul Santo’s meal is interrupted by protesters demanding restaurant diners stand in objection to racist police. Paul’s clash with one demonstrator gets him in trouble, but rather than take a one-day suspension, he opts for retirement, already fed up with a public that designates cops as the bad guys. He soon has the chance to reconnect with his 21-year-old daughter, Tracy, who’s been estranged since Paul’s alcoholic, drug-abusing wife, Marcy, left him years ago. Tracy wants to start a new life on the West Coast. Paul joins her, and while Tracy stays with her friend Heidi, he seeks adventure at the Joshua Tree National Park. There he meets Kate at the Joshua Tree Inn’s front desk and later encounters a band of hippies who regularly dabble in drugs and UFO gazing. One night, Paul himself spots an unexplained spacecraft on the road, precipitating a vehicular accident. He’s certain someone in the group slipped him a Mickey (like, say, LSD); otherwise, there’s a very good chance he’s losing his mind. Though Schindler’s (The Last Sewer Ball, 2013, etc.) offbeat novel ultimately delves into the mystery of Paul’s mental state, it builds on a sturdy foundation of lonely cop–turned–family man. Paul’s torn between giving Tracy space and ingratiating himself into her life; Tracy wants to tell her father the true nature of her relationship with Heidi and her surprise career plans. It’s a worthy precursor to the latter half, which is effectively blanketed in ambiguity. Even Kate, for example, is suspect (maybe she drugged Paul’s tea), and many things could be the reason he sees the craft and other peculiarities, from stress to the desert heat. The prose, meanwhile, spices up the narrative without subverting Paul’s predicament: “As he coffee’ed up, his brain was spinning, churning, digging for solutions.”
A sublimely unusual tale of a man’s dementia or, perhaps, his awakening.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9662408-0-1
Page Count: 303
Publisher: The Elevated Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2017
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 celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.
After 1,000 years of peace, whispers that “the Nameless One will return” ignite the spark that sets the world order aflame.
No, the Nameless One is not a new nickname for Voldemort. Here, evil takes the shape of fire-breathing dragons—beasts that feed off chaos and imbalance—set on destroying humankind. The leader of these creatures, the Nameless One, has been trapped in the Abyss for ages after having been severely wounded by the sword Ascalon wielded by Galian Berethnet. These events brought about the current order: Virtudom, the kingdom set up by Berethnet, is a pious society that considers all dragons evil. In the East, dragons are worshiped as gods—but not the fire-breathing type. These dragons channel the power of water and are said to be born of stars. They forge a connection with humans by taking riders. In the South, an entirely different way of thinking exists. There, a society of female mages called the Priory worships the Mother. They don’t believe that the Berethnet line, continued by generations of queens, is the sacred key to keeping the Nameless One at bay. This means he could return—and soon. “Do you not see? It is a cycle.” The one thing uniting all corners of the world is fear. Representatives of each belief system—Queen Sabran the Ninth of Virtudom, hopeful dragon rider Tané of the East, and Ead Duryan, mage of the Priory from the South—are linked by the common goal of keeping the Nameless One trapped at any cost. This world of female warriors and leaders feels natural, and while there is a “chosen one” aspect to the tale, it’s far from the main point. Shannon’s depth of imagination and worldbuilding are impressive, as this 800-pager is filled not only with legend, but also with satisfying twists that turn legend on its head. Shannon isn’t new to this game of complex storytelling. Her Bone Season novels (The Song Rising, 2017, etc.) navigate a multilayered society of clairvoyants. Here, Shannon chooses a more traditional view of magic, where light fights against dark, earth against sky, and fire against water. Through these classic pairings, an entirely fresh and addicting tale is born. Shannon may favor detailed explication over keeping a steady pace, but the epic converging of plotlines at the end is enough to forgive.
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-029-8
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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