Intensely realized and often gripping, so perhaps the lack of any discernable structure, logic or explanations deliberately...
This first novel from the author of Your Next-Door Neighbor is a Dragon (2009) is part of a multimedia project that also encompasses video, music, artwork, blogs and web pages.
In 1874, Gideon Long, terrified of his tyrannical father, plots a train robbery in order to conceal the losses he caused in the family business. Unfortunately, tough sheriff Warren Groves gets wind of the crime and, obliged to leave his beloved wife Annie in the throes of a difficult childbirth, rides in pursuit of Gideon's gang. Fatally wounded by Warren, Gideon staggers away into the desert and follows an eerie white dog to a mysterious, hot, milky pool hidden in an abandoned pueblo. He falls in, only to find himself reborn in a new, younger body. With his deep hatred of Warren—the two were rivals for Annie, though Warren doesn't know that yet—Gideon captures the sheriff and throws him into the pool, too. (How's that again?) And this Fountain of Rebirth also turns out to be a Fountain of Duplicates. (Don't ask. It just is, OK?) Gideon even tries to bring Annie back after she dies in childbirth, but bodies reborn from dead flesh are alive but soulless. Eventually, with multiple copies of both men, they're forced to put their rivalry aside and come to an agreement—since each duplicate has all the memories of the original. Fast forward to 1951, where Casper Cord, a Warren dying of radiation-induced cancer after serving in the invasion of Japan following multiple atomic bombings, stumbles upon a murdered duplicate of Annie—apparently she had all her faculties—and sets out to discover where she came from and why she was murdered. And then, in 1973...and 2006...
Intensely realized and often gripping, so perhaps the lack of any discernable structure, logic or explanations deliberately points readers to the multimedia extensions. It's bizarrely fascinating, and what it's all about is anybody's guess.Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3364-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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