A complexly layered and action-packed middle volume that sets the stage for the conclusion.
In the second part of The Wormwood Trilogy (following Rosewater, 2018), a Nigerian city in an alternate near future experiences civil war among humans and alien creatures.
The Homians, aliens from a distant planet who have despoiled their own world, have uploaded digital copies of themselves onto vast servers and are planning a mass download…into us. They have seeded the Earth with xenoforms, alien microorganisms that have penetrated the environment and its flora and fauna. Over the years, the Nigerian city of Rosewater has grown up around Wormwood, a huge alien organism whose emanations have immense healing powers. Femi Alaagomeji of Nigerian intelligence agency S45 is concerned about the degree to which xenoforms have integrated with most people. And she’s right to be concerned; that integration opens the way for Homian download. But something goes awry with the first attempt to take over a human body; the being in the body of Alyssa Sutcliffe knows that she isn’t Alyssa, but she’s not quite sure who—or what—she is instead. S45 agent Aminat Arigbede attempts to bring “Alyssa” in for testing, even as Rosewood erupts on multiple fronts: Wormwood is under attack by another alien organism, a plantlike creature intended to act as a regulatory mechanism but instead gone wild; and Rosewood’s mayor, Jack Jacques, tries to consolidate power by announcing the city’s secession from Nigeria, which incites armed conflict in the streets. The key to settling both matters may lie with Kaaro, one of the only surviving psychic sensitives, who is both Aminat’s boyfriend and a friend to Anthony, Wormwood’s human avatar. However, Kaaro has no intention of allowing himself to become a pawn in Rosewater’s power games, in which loyalties shift so rapidly that even the reader races to figure out what side everyone’s on, if sides can even be defined.
A complexly layered and action-packed middle volume that sets the stage for the conclusion.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-44908-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
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 fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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