A bracing narrative that confronts hard truths and raises fascinating possibilities.
Feltman’s thought-provoking speculative novel follows humanity underground in the wake of climate change catastrophes.
Manny is the son of Patrick Stewart, the police chief for the colony of New York in the year 2350. Three hundred years earlier, Hurricane Yolanda drove New York City residents into the subway system, where 7,000 brave souls set up a new underground community. When the book opens, Manny is lonely; ever since Manny’s beloved mother died three years earlier, Patrick has thrown himself into his work and ignored his son. Manny’s life changes when he makes a new, older friend, Julio Suarez. He spends more and more time at the Suarez home until they officially become his foster family following a particularly abusive episode with the alcoholic Patrick. The rest of the story focuses on how Manny grows and matures in a loving environment, though the shadow of Patrick continues to loom large throughout the story. As he nears graduation, Manny begins to wonder if the outside world might once again be hospitable for humans; the epilogue neatly sets up the next volume in Feltman’s Starlight and Ashes trilogy (“Maybe the environment is no longer as hostile to human beings as it was in the early days of gasoline engines and deforestation, earthquakes and wild fires”). In her debut work, the author succeeds in creating a believable civilization established by survivors of extreme weather. The colony’s residents have to walk and are restricted to vegetarian diets, yet they still have electronic devices—the clever survivors haven’t been forced back to the Stone Age. But cultural inertia has set in over the centuries, and nobody gives any thought to the outside world that their ancestors left behind, despite its potential. In addition to serving as a cautionary tale, the book describes a boy’s journey to find a family to call his own after being rejected by his father. Manny is a fascinating case study of nature versus nurture—watching him evolve is even more entrancing than exploring the contradictory place in which he lives.
A bracing narrative that confronts hard truths and raises fascinating possibilities.Pub Date: July 31, 2021
ISBN: 9781737164210
Page Count: 333
Publisher: ANJ Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2024
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
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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