An entertaining, if occasionally uneven, fantasy tale about a parallel Earth and the strange creatures therein.
In this fantasy novel, a king in an alternate universe plans to conquer an entire realm, and he kidnaps people from our Earth to do it.
Sixty-five million years ago, a comet crashed into Earth, resulting in mass extinction—and the opening of a gateway to a parallel universe. Later, in 1585, Father Sebastian Vlogentia Garcia Lopez leads residents of his village to a small island to hide from Spanish inquisitors. As they explore their new hiding place, Father Sebastian stumbles upon a glowing, floating orb, which transports him to an entirely new world. He soon realizes that he’s found a place that could be truly safe for his villagers. Years later, in the Second World’s kingdom of Vlogentia, founded by Father Sebastian, a woman named Bianca celebrates the new year by spending time with her boyfriend and taking part in a sport before an audience of thousands of spectators; then one of her teammates leads her to a group of kidnappers. Back on our Earth, Jason Blankenship and his wife, Margaret,are taking a trip to investigate a new job offer. Before long, they’re abducted, as well, taken to an island in the middle of nowhere, and sent through the portal to Vlogentia. Now Jason is being forced to help his kidnappers create a poison—which is just one step in the king’s plan to take over all of the Second World. Now Bianca, Jason, and Margaret must work together to escape their captors and foil the plot. Over the course of this fantasy novel, Somers offers an often engaging, if uneven, tale of two worlds coming together. The author appears to have done his research when it comes to aspects of Mayan and Mesoamerican culture and how they permeate the architecture and culture of Vlogentia, which is an impressively addition to the overall worldbuilding; he also includes several appendices regarding these elements at the back of the book. However, some of the dialogue leaves something to be desired; for example, Jason’s kidnapper often speaks like a bad movie villain, as when he advises his cohorts to “do your destructive best.”
An entertaining, if occasionally uneven, fantasy tale about a parallel Earth and the strange creatures therein.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73578-790-9
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2021
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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