A seriocomic novel that explores the possibilities of futuristic technology and the classic tropes of a mismatched duo.
Debut author Zakreski offers a sci-fi novel about a lawyer dealing with an intergalactic computer virus.
After law student Andron Varga meets a folk singer named Astrid who “smells of rare mountain flowers,” it doesn’t take long for the two to fall in love. Down the road, Andron proposes marriage. Then, suddenly, Astrid is killed by a falling meteorite. Sent into despair, Andron becomes determined to make sense of the tragedy. During his quest for answers, he downloads and installs the software for ILEAP, a project that aims to make contact with civilizations elsewhere in the universe. After he clicks the “FIND LIFE button” and utters some lonely words (“there must be someone somewhere to love me”), things become even stranger. Soon enough, the entire Internet crashes and authorities believe that Andron is involved with a cyberterrorist attack; he’s brutally tortured but eventually released. At this point, the plot lacks direction for several pages until Zakreski introduces a new entity to craftily set it back on course. Andron, through his blundering, has managed to download a virus named Cygnus, who tells him that his own cyber-DNA “got into your computer…and boom Mac Daddy, here I am.” It’s a virus with an attitude, and woe to any innocent lawyer who thinks he can put that genie back in the bottle. They wind up as a team of sorts, and although they initially have some fun, Cygnus steers into moral gray areas. For example, it increases Andron’s bank account exponentially, causing him to worry that something bad is around the corner. In a story that’s part William Gibson-style cyberthriller, part wacky comedy, the pendulum swings between an investigation of the human soul and off-color remarks, such as Cygnus’ opinion that “Bitches are all for successful older dudes with tragic pasts.” Zakreski depicts Cygnus as foulmouthed and capable of dark actions, and he’s certainly shown to be a handful for a man like Andron, who simply wants to stay out of trouble. Readers who enjoy such chaotic characters are likely to enjoy the conflict, though others may wish there were more to the overall premise.
A seriocomic novel that explores the possibilities of futuristic technology and the classic tropes of a mismatched duo.Pub Date: June 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5333-9182-7
Page Count: 366
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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