Nail-biting fun amid near-future pseudo-science.
Planet Earth is fried and fricasseed in this wildly suspenseful post-apocalyptic action yarn only partially set deep beneath the ocean waves.
Compared to the sun-scarred humans still clinging to life topside, young biologist Jesse Baines is living well. Pacifica—the secret undersea lab nestled off the coast of San Diego where he and a community of other scientists have taken refuge after society’s collapse—is a self-sufficient oasis far from the reach of marauding cannibals. Still, Jesse can’t shake the feeling of being imprisoned in this pineapple under the sea, so he longs for a chance to ditch his cushy confines. When an unexpected disaster threatens Pacifica, he leaps at the chance to take part in a risky reconnaissance mission to recover some necessary items stored back on land. What unfolds next is all part of an ambitious plot that evokes elements of The Road and BioShock, the epic video game. Pryce’s muscular prose is relentlessly descriptive and often times even poetic in its blood and guts portrayal of a world seared into insanity. A keen sense of apprehension and anxiety consistently stokes the engines of suspense in an inexorable march toward ultimate calamity. Things only start to lag once the door is thrown open and the boogieman let out. Although artfully rendered, the main villain here is either a clichéd madman (right down to his evil genius grin), or (more generously) a loving homage to every Hollywood bad guy who’s ever plotted to take over the world. The story’s deep, dark, terrible secret, meanwhile, is a conspiracy theorist’s fantasy whirling with fears of overpopulation, global warning, genetic engineering and cloning. Some of the plot points seem a bit forced in order to facilitate the high adrenaline set pieces, while at least two other story threads are left virtually high and dry. But vividly rendered characters worth rooting for and supremely orchestrated action combine to compensate for any listing that might occur, which helps keep this semi-aquatic adventure on course to a thrilling conclusion.
Nail-biting fun amid near-future pseudo-science.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0984669103
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Cenozoic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
PERSPECTIVES
A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed “Pi”), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi’s ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100811-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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