Religious folk-horror distinguishes this gripping series-starter about robots conspiring against humanity.
In Hilf’s SF novel, a post-apocalyptic Earth roils with tech-phobia and violent religion while, far away in deep space, a human colony faces threats of its own.
The story begins with the “Disruption,” the apocalyptic collapse of human civilization in 2064. Prior to this event, an all-controlling artificial intelligence called GAIA solved problems humankind didn’t even ask it to; its many boons included eerily humanlike androids and the ability to send expeditions outside the solar system, leading to a domed-city human colony on the planet Proxima Centauri b. Abruptly, after GAIA’s programming went rogue (“The mycological architecture rebuilt itself moment by moment, each strand birthing countless offspring”), the technological infrastructure failed and the androids turned murderous. By the year 2101, billions of people on Earth have died, and most of the survivors subsist among failing farming villages and isolated ruins. Some communities have embraced throwback religions—not just the violent extremes of Christianity, but even older traditions harkening to ancient pagan fertility gods such as Baal and Asherah. For these deities, human sacrifice is a key component of worship. Meanwhile, on Proxima Centauri b, hundreds of colonists are now self-sustaining and even manage occasional contact with still-functioning Earth bases. But as an expeditionary force prepares to return to the troubled homeworld, sinister events involving the colony’s governing AI suggest another Disruption—or something even worse—approaching. A mounting sense of menace and some jolting elements of gore and mutation arguably place this novel in the horror category, though it’s also crackerjack SF. Fans of both genres may be reminded of such shockers as Harvest Home (1973) and, especially, the The Wicker Man (novelized in 1978). Themes of radical environmentalism, climate change, the menace of AI, and the weaponization of religion bring this cauldron to a boil, even with a crowded cast of characters and semi-opaque passages hinging on readers’ comprehension of machine-language code. It all ends with a To Be Continued.
Religious folk-horror distinguishes this gripping series-starter about robots conspiring against humanity.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798901740484
Page Count: 478
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2026
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
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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