A fitting end to this trilogy, which, in even its trippiest moments, maintains a plausibility that others in this subgenre...
In an alternate near future, the threat of an alien invasion looms ever closer in the city-state of Rosewater, the surrounding nation of Nigeria, and, ultimately, all of Earth.
As per the agreement set in the previous Wormwood novel (The Rosewater Insurrection, 2019), the alien Homians have begun mentally occupying reanimates, apparently mindless fresh human corpses healed and revived by Homian technology. Unbeknownst to most, this is the beginning of a gradual takeover of Earth by the Homians. But some Homians are trying to speed up the process through a series of mass murders. Worse still, Hannah Jacques, a lawyer and the wife of Rosewater’s mayor (who struck the deal with the Homians), publicly reveals that reanimates are capable of recovering their memories and cognitive facilities. Tensions in Rosewater rise still higher as criminal twins and rivals Taiwo and Kehinde engage in violent turf wars and the mayor legalizes gay marriage in what is still a very homophobic population. Meanwhile, Femi Alaagomeji, once the head of the Nigerian intelligence agency S45, works to counter the Homian threat, enlisting her former operative Kaaro, the cowardly but powerful psychic who is sensitive to her cause even while his girlfriend, Aminat, another ex–S45 agent, feels frustrated in her current position as Rosewater’s head of security. And Oyin Da, the enigmatic time-traveling woman also known as Bicycle Girl, learns some troubling truths about herself as she searches for a way to undermine the aliens and ensure humanity’s survival. Popular American tales of alien invasion typically depict the contentious nations of the world recognizing the threat and uniting despite their differences to defeat the unearthly foe; Thompson is far too canny about how even an alternate version of our planet really works politically to throw such a corny show our way. Of course, it’s still a trope (but a more believable one) that only a few people are clearsighted and ruthless enough to see and act upon the truth while everyone else fails to notice, too intent on their own needs. The ultimate strategy our (anti)heroes choose to employ against the Homians also has its roots in a sci-fi plot device that’s more than a century old, but it’s still carried off with drama and panache.
A fitting end to this trilogy, which, in even its trippiest moments, maintains a plausibility that others in this subgenre often lack.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-44909-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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