by Timothy Allen ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 3, 2013
Adventurous sci-fi fans should find this kitschy read—the first of a planned series—ironically appealing.
In Allen’s debut novel, an astronaut encounters the primitive inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic future Earth.
In 2025, Native American NASA astronaut Orlando Iron Wolf identifies what eventually turns out to be a massive comet heading straight toward Earth. Experts give humankind two years before the “harbinger of doom” hits. During that time, Wolf sets out on a mission to observe the comet, but when his ship is caught in its coma, he’s forced to cryogenically freeze himself, with the aid of Synthea, the ship’s artificial intelligence system. (Synthea is in love with Wolf, and, as a visible, touchable hologram, she’s frequently clad in either a candy striper outfit that “had to have been from an adult novelty shop,” or one exactly like Lara Croft’s from Tomb Raider.) Approximately 150,000 years later, the comet returns to the solar system and Wolf’s ship frees itself from the mass. He reawakens to a literally much-altered Earth, which has been knocked off its axis; also, a chunk of the planet has broken off, and is now a second moon. Wolf and Synthea land on their now-unfamiliar home planet. They quickly realize that Wolf is now somehow indestructible: savage animals can’t harm him, and swords can’t pierce his skin. His bone mass has somehow tripled—his ribs, for example, have fused together to give him a subcutaneous “suit of armor.” The dimwitted but hunky Wolf (who doesn’t know what “heliocentric” means, and calls the Oort cloud the “Oat cloud,” among other things) eventually befriends the locals, and quickly becomes entangled in a bloody battle between warring factions. This sci-fi adventure’s prose is often sloppy (“prisoners…were euphemized”), and many of the plot’s premises simply make no sense; humans living 150,000 years in the future, for instance, still speak passable English. However, it’s still action-packed, breakneck-paced, and undeniably fun; for instance, the protagonist notes that some of the primitives resemble present-day celebrities (“Wolf remembered an old movie star from his time. Lindsey Lohan was her name. This girl was the spitting image of her”; “She looked like Jennifer Lopez, mixed with Selma Hayek”).
Adventurous sci-fi fans should find this kitschy read—the first of a planned series—ironically appealing.Pub Date: June 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1475982671
Page Count: 278
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Samantha Shannon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 2019
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.
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After 1,000 years of peace, whispers that “the Nameless One will return” ignite the spark that sets the world order aflame.
No, the Nameless One is not a new nickname for Voldemort. Here, evil takes the shape of fire-breathing dragons—beasts that feed off chaos and imbalance—set on destroying humankind. The leader of these creatures, the Nameless One, has been trapped in the Abyss for ages after having been severely wounded by the sword Ascalon wielded by Galian Berethnet. These events brought about the current order: Virtudom, the kingdom set up by Berethnet, is a pious society that considers all dragons evil. In the East, dragons are worshiped as gods—but not the fire-breathing type. These dragons channel the power of water and are said to be born of stars. They forge a connection with humans by taking riders. In the South, an entirely different way of thinking exists. There, a society of female mages called the Priory worships the Mother. They don’t believe that the Berethnet line, continued by generations of queens, is the sacred key to keeping the Nameless One at bay. This means he could return—and soon. “Do you not see? It is a cycle.” The one thing uniting all corners of the world is fear. Representatives of each belief system—Queen Sabran the Ninth of Virtudom, hopeful dragon rider Tané of the East, and Ead Duryan, mage of the Priory from the South—are linked by the common goal of keeping the Nameless One trapped at any cost. This world of female warriors and leaders feels natural, and while there is a “chosen one” aspect to the tale, it’s far from the main point. Shannon’s depth of imagination and worldbuilding are impressive, as this 800-pager is filled not only with legend, but also with satisfying twists that turn legend on its head. Shannon isn’t new to this game of complex storytelling. Her Bone Season novels (The Song Rising, 2017, etc.) navigate a multilayered society of clairvoyants. Here, Shannon chooses a more traditional view of magic, where light fights against dark, earth against sky, and fire against water. Through these classic pairings, an entirely fresh and addicting tale is born. Shannon may favor detailed explication over keeping a steady pace, but the epic converging of plotlines at the end is enough to forgive.
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-029-8
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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