A fun and clever time-traveling tale.
This SF sequel sees a time-traveling psychologist face bigger and tougher enemies.
Nine months after a harrowing, violent face-off with a gang called Demon Monks, Jackson Traine still doesn’t know where his brother, Kenny, is; whether his sister, Kansas, is safe; and if his romance with Lena Cortland is salvageable after his decision to publicly deny his time-traveling skills. At least some of his worst PTSD symptoms are under control following his combat training with Lena’s friends, but the stress of his situation is not helping his anxiety. And now, his search for answers points toward the existence of other time travelers who keep changing the timeline. His perfect recall makes Jackson one of the few people—along with his brother and sister—who can remember events that took place in other timestreams, making him the target of a secret organization bent on using him and his powers supposedly for the greater good. When a new ally appears—offering to help locate his siblings—Jackson realizes he may have made a pact with a devil greater that all his enemies combined, one who is a threat to his mental health and his fraught relationship with Lena. The advice to “Know as much as you can about your commanders and what they want from you”never felt more essential. Hayman deftly mixes the engrossing, geeky intricacies of the science behind time travel, paradoxes, and alternative timelines with an ingenious, fast-paced plot that follows a well-intentioned, determined, yet wretched protagonist. Jackson experiences every time jump as a traumatizing mental and physical experience. As a thoughtful psychologist, he tends to analyze everything and everyone, including himself, adding an uncomfortable element of self-awareness to his already complex relationship with his time-jumping abilities. Smart and powerful female characters and the moral dilemmas of time traveling and changing the timeline enrich a narrative that ends with a strong setup for the next volume.
A fun and clever time-traveling tale. (Science Fiction. 18-Adult)Pub Date: July 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-927920-42-8
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Fiero Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2022
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
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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