A somewhat scattered SF adventure tale, but one that may appeal to nonlinear thinkers.
Warden’s debut SF novel offers a tale of an outer-space mission and hidden agendas.
The people of early 22nd-century Earth, unified under a one-world government, look forward to the launch of an expedition to the distant reaches of Saturn, which has suddenly and mysteriously developed a polar ice cap. The surprise choice as captain is Courtney Voth, a 25-year-old Canadian science prodigy. She once underwent radical treatment for a brain tumor, which caused her to permanently lose her hair, and she anonymously posed for a steamy, unauthorized photo shoot at a museum meteorite exhibit, whose photos became famous. Cloistered conspiracy theorists suspect that Courtney could be the tool of theoretical aliens, assumed to have been secretly controlling mankind for ages. Courtney, meanwhile, notices that many of her Saturn crew have cloak-and-dagger backgrounds in the military; one is concealing his role as the recent assassin of an island-nation dictator who tormented her people with forced anorexia. Before the mission is through, it will encounter a pantheon of weird and whimsical aliens, and in the aftermath, Courtney receives a considerable gift. Readers who are well grounded in SF may recall The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, the 1984 cult movie whose quirky style, so Hollywood legend goes, was due in part to numerous reshoots and re-edits. This narrative hops between the disparate characters, situations, and crises in a similar manner, seldom lingering long enough on any of them to find a sure footing or a consistent tone. However, as a comedy/satire, it feels like something from the lighter spectrum of Kurt Vonnegut’s work, and as a first-contact story, it’s something that’s notably unusual for the genre. However, readers may be distressed that, even in the future, social media stars are still ascendant.
A somewhat scattered SF adventure tale, but one that may appeal to nonlinear thinkers. (science fiction)Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5255-9917-0
Page Count: 186
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2022
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
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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