An involving, well-constructed sci-fi tale of survival.
A sci-fi variation on the story of Adam and Eve.
In Sadaphal’s post-apocalyptic tale, a spacecraft pilot named Asher Grant, “a misplaced journeyman without a map and a sense of direction,” returns to Earth only to find it radically changed: The cities are in ruins; the countryside is a wasteland; and there are corpses everywhere. After a short, harrowing interval, he spots a living figure in the distance, and they run toward each other. Evelyn Coble tells Asher she awoke to find herself in the ruins and has been wandering for days. He shares rations with her from his ship, but even as they’re tentatively getting to know each other, they’re vaguely aware that each is keeping secrets from the other and that those secrets involve the catastrophe that reduced the world to rubble. In a series of intricate flashbacks, readers learn that complicated back story piecemeal. It’s a tale involving the global power grab by a small group of “technocrats” who initially used tools such as the media, bioengineered foods, aerosols in the air, medicated water and cybernetic mind control (called the Collective) to subjugate the masses. When a desperate man named Linus Benjamin manages to shut down the Collective, on which the whole world has come to rely, global chaos swiftly follows. Evelyn’s hidden past connects her with Linus Benjamin, just as Asher’s past connects him with something called The Omega Strain, a weird synapse-destroying infection that is equally lethal to humans, animals and complex machines. In the flashbacks, we see Asher and Evelyn in their pre-disaster lives, and in the book’s present, we see them grappling with their bleak new world, attempting to find other survivors and trying—with comically little success—to warm up to each other, since they’re nothing alike. Sadaphal is a sharply observant narrator with a fine sense of pathos, and he paces his story with several well-turned surprises.
An involving, well-constructed sci-fi tale of survival.Pub Date: July 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989223300
Page Count: 204
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
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
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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