Ribald SF/fantasy sends a cannonade of gross humor against the big target that was the 45th president.
Rodney Wyckham, a Napoleonic-era British mariner repatriated to outer space as governor of his own alien-populated planet, offers relief to the stricken Earth of 2028—only to run afoul of buffoonish right-wingers.
Scully continues a comical SF/mashup series commenced in Grapeshot & Demons (2012), here tweaked as a broadside against the administration of former president Donald Trump. The narrative does a coherent job illuminating a crazy backstory. Via alien portals, Rodney Wyckham—a Horatio Hornblower–esque British naval officer from the Age of Fighting Sail—was teleported, along with a small fleet of 1814 seafarers, to a distant alien planet. There, with courage and cleverness, they allied with other species to defeat the Dreash, giant warthoglike monsters that terrorized the universe. In gratitude—and perhaps some self-serving machinations—the League of Worlds allowed the humans (their lives prolonged by ET medicine) to continue administering the Dreash planet, remade as a showcase world called Freeport. Gov. Wyckham has been sympathetically monitoring the wretched affairs on Earth, battered by climate change and Balkanized by corrupt leaders. In 2028, Wyckham reveals Freeport’s existence to an amazed humanity, offering tourist opportunities and science-based advice. But one faction isn’t grateful. In 2020, a fat, blustering demagogue U.S. president with bad hair, a certain “Victor Triumph,” running for reelection on a right-wing anti-immigrant ticket (despite secretly being a Latino illegal named Rodriguez), lost the vote to actor Leonardo DiCarpaccio. Triumph simply declared himself “emperor of Earth” to the cheers of white supremacists, religious zealots, and greedy businessmen. Thus the USA split into separate countries: two progressive coasts vs. Triumph’s supporters in a reactionary-puritanical Midwest and a resurrected Confederate South. As the assorted Earth leaders descend on Freeport for diplomatic visits, it is, naturally, the vile Triumph who—using trumped-up accusations over “illegal aliens,” kidnappings, and unfair trade deals—colludes with remaining Dreash in a full invasion (“People are saying they’re rapists, they’re murderers, they sell illegal drugs on dozens of planets. And these aliens get to keep Americans out of fantastic new markets? Not gonna happen, folks, not gonna happen”). With live coverage arranged via Fox News, Triumph pits modern American weaponry against Wyckham’s centuries-old cannon and single-shot firearms. But the defenders of Freeport have some tricks of their own.
Scully doesn’t specify which characters are Democrats and which are Republicans, but readers smarter than the average QAnon conspiracy theorist can pretty much figure it out themselves, with renamed caricatures of Steve Bannon, Mike Pence, and even Stormy Daniels (“Squally Gales”) teleported in from the headlines, largely to look even more foolish and grotesque than their real-life inspirations. The use of cannon-carrying whales and chemical projectiles may well qualify this as steampunk—or maybe steamPunk’d. Sometimes these genre mashups run out of gimmick fast and deflate well before the finis (RIP, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), but this ephemeral romp keeps the action fast, the combat huuuge, and adds a trio of Olympics-class female fencers from San Francisco as visiting tourists, one of whom becomes the series’ presumptive new love interest for the stalwart Wyckham. One must note that the writer’s penchant for out-of-this-world sex and scatology is just as unsubtle as the politics. And it may be noted that admirers of Donald J. Trump may find some contents objectionable, believe it or not.
Ribald SF/fantasy sends a cannonade of gross humor against the big target that was the 45th president. (author bio)Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-60-944987-0
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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