An energetic thriller about beleaguered warriors of God battling the powers of darkness that delivers a rousing conclusion.
A hero and his cohorts clash with a sinister clan in this tense volume, part of a post-apocalyptic trilogy.
This latest novel from Jones (Into the Dark of Day, 2013, etc.) ends his action-packed trilogy about a world of toxic oceans, roving mutant bands, and scattered pockets of hopeful survivors. The previous book left its small band of heroes in a seemingly impossible situation, especially former cop Kane Lorusso. The evil Coyote clan of mutants forced Kane to watch his wife die and his two children led into slavery before he was shot off a high cliff and presumed dead. He didn’t die, but this new volume opens with him almost wishing he had, badly wounded and deep in despair. His concerned comrades include his massive, 8-foot-tall, 500-pound guardian, Courtland Thompson; his former nemesis Dagen; and Jenna, the woman who saved Dagen from the worst in himself. While hoping that Kane will recover, Courtland sadly recalls the widespread destruction (“So much had happened. The world as they knew it had ended. It had been fast and furious, drowning the planet in plague and fire. Few had survived”). Stalking this group from afar, through lieutenants and moles, is Coyote leader Malak, a provincial warlord who’s possessed by an ancient evil spirit. Malak and his minions are able to brainwash the innocent to join their cause. But benevolent spirits exist, too, in Jones’ multifaceted world. As in the previous volumes, the narrative features strong, evocative Christian overlays, which Jones handles with considerable dramatic skill and a no-nonsense delivery that should make this series attractive to readers of Christian sci-fi. Plotlines that have been accumulating power in the first two books converge in this imaginative novel as the ragtag forces of Kane and his friends square off against the sinister Malak and his followers. Jones adeptly interweaves this earthly brawl (complete with copious amounts of violence and some compelling descriptions and dialogue—non-Christians should be every bit as gripped by the action as Christians) with a larger celestial struggle being fought over the future of humanity. Kane’s quest to save his children, Dagen’s search for the best parts of his soul, the survivors’ hunt for an ancient artifact of enormous power—all are brought to a stirring, well-handled climax.
An energetic thriller about beleaguered warriors of God battling the powers of darkness that delivers a rousing conclusion.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5148-8039-5
Page Count: 326
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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