A fast-paced sequel involving angelic and demonic machinations that’s not for the faint of heart or stomach.
A second helping of a trilogy cooks up countless horrors and paranormal events.
Faggioli’s (One in a Million, 2016) latest novel offers out-of-this-world encounters as well as earthly chills. New players, several who are in danger and one who’s a monster, join the series’ original characters. The scary newbie is Troy “the Bread Man” Forester, a psychopathic torturer and serial killer in the tradition of Hannibal Lecter. But unlike Hannibal, who worked solo, Troy, a deliveryman for Lolo’s Breads, takes commands from a demon known as The Other. The Other orders parricide Troy to kidnap with extreme, sinister intent two young women, flirty virgin Ashley Barton and tough, tatted Jasmine White. Sheriff Floyd Conch learns that accused killer Kyle Fasano had been in the area when Ashley vanished, so Kyle becomes a suspect in the girl’s disappearance. Readers of the series’ first volume, however, know that Kyle is innocent and that he and policeman Napoleon Villa left Earth in cataclysmic fashion. Kyle, a rare “chosen one” with the ability to save millions from damnation, now is caught in a Purgatory-like realm known as the Lake of Loneliness. His guide is a creature who’s suspended between worlds; this “Middler” is a friend of the angel known as the Gray Man. The Gray Man himself guides Napoleon on a tour of hell, complete with eye-pecking crows, before launching him into a beautiful journey through the stars. Faggioli nicely moves the action between Earth and radiant, terrifying worlds beyond, and he interconnects characters involved in current crimes with those on the mend from past wrongdoings. Female characters are intriguing, but the really good parts go to guys, including those wearing dresses. Cross-dressing Matt Barnes, a friend of Ashley’s whom Conch interviews, sports a floral frock but no heels: “A dress without heels? It didn’t work,” ruminates the sheriff. Peppered with humor and drenched in horror, the book offers superb descriptions of police work and induces genuine sadness, as when Ashley’s mother is overcome by the news of her daughter’s kidnapping. The prologue seems confusing and unnecessary, but once the chapters get rolling, there is no stopping the suspense and the action, although brutal scenes can be extreme.
A fast-paced sequel involving angelic and demonic machinations that’s not for the faint of heart or stomach.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Atticus Creative
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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