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
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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