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THE LAST DEFENDER

A relatable, if flawed, thriller that’s soberingly reflective.

A dystopian yarn about survival in a world where big government rules absolutely everything.

Texas-based author and retired banker Pearson (Deception, 2016, etc.) has crafted a compact thrill ride that incorporates themes of governmental authoritarianism, oppression, and organized resistance. Just a short while after the election of a leader whom people call “the Socialist,” who delivered solemn promises of wage equality and economic stability, the nation began suffering under the rule of a dictatorship. The administration begins to make the citizens of former bustling metropolis Prosper uneasy with involuntary surveillance, “punitive taxation,” pricing controls, and an Internal Security Bureau terrorizing local businesses with tactics designed to keep the city under its thumb. More immediate is the fact that people are randomly disappearing, which has the locals angry and desperate for answers; at the same time, the government explores the idea of creating an army of infallible, microchipped soldiers. Meanwhile, Brent Stevens, a scientist at Pure Research, has been demoted to assembly-line manager after the government seizes the business. Frustrated, he begins to stealthily assemble his own resistance movement, which the author details with increasing levels of suspense and introspective characterization. When his internet-savvy friend Rob Taub goes missing after being attacked by Internal Security Bureau henchmen, his wife, Lori, vows revenge—although things get messy when Brent admits his secret love for her. Brent is drawn as a powerful, resilient hero, and he ably carries this brief novel through aggressively violent confrontations and politically charged intrigue. However, his immediate assumption of Lori’s affections after Rob goes missing seems implausible, and his own wife, Beth, disappears without explanation. Nevertheless, Pearson has a knack for swift action and his storyline involving everyday citizens versus an evil bureaucracy offers a powerful hook, and it’s particularly notable that he accomplishes it all in relatively few pages. Readers will also surely draw correlations between this narrative and the ongoing Capitol Hill upheaval following the last presidential election.

A relatable, if flawed, thriller that’s soberingly reflective.

Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6586-9

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Lulu

Review Posted Online: May 31, 2017

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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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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THE TESTAMENTS

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

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Atwood goes back to Gilead.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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