Gamer-style high-SF action, with breathing space provided by abstruse rules and regulations.
A Florida college professor is mystically linked to a demi-godlike warrior in Behling’s SF adventure, one in a series.
Josh and Senyak are two “Karmic” linked individuals from separate universes. Once a lawyer, Joshua Elias Tanner now accompanies (sometimes telepathically) Senyak Marztanak, a downgraded “Immortal,” on harrowing adventures, going up against pan-galactic villains while sharpening their superpowers of “Attunement” (which often manifest as psychic abilities) and leveling up in resilience. On a planet of bizarre “Affins,” humanoid beings with aspects of Earth animals, the duo is chagrined to discover that their martial skills do not match a properly “Attuned” mouse woman. Relentless practice and meditation breakthroughs enhance their stats (charts are provided at regular intervals), a handy thing given the monstrous foes on the way. There’s Nagal, a revenge-crazed, 11-foot-long serpent-creature with impenetrable scales, and Nagal’s sort-of controlling entity, the Savoy Corporation, an evil consortium whose leaders are energy-draining fiends technically no longer among the living (“vampires” is apt taxonomy). One such macabre malefactor is Kyon Shi, master of armies of zombified slaves, who has co-opted a kingdom of space-going pirates to attack valiant space Marines (a Marine officer, Lt. Junior Grade Alysa Nang, has her own specific Karmic bond with Josh’s 4-year-old daughter back on Earth). So, it’s personal. Readers must hack through score-tallying, roleplaying-game rulebook prose (“Sen pointed out that their boons had amplified the benefits they received during Attunement amplification compared to regular cultivation enhancement”) to get to the action stuff. The good news: There absolutely is some supernova-hot action stuff—eventually. The narrative’s mythologies are cherry-picked more heavily from Asian cultures than the typical European high fantasy tropes. A plethora of pop-culture references, particularly from the Star Wars and Star Trek (“Spock? Spock’s a badass, Sen”) franchises, provides some (actually good) comic relief.
Gamer-style high-SF action, with breathing space provided by abstruse rules and regulations.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Physicians Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2024
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
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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