Propulsive action, an unforgettable lead, and all-consuming storytelling.
In the fourth and penultimate installment of Hincker’s History of Light urban fantasy saga, an endearing, mentally unstable artist confronts the end of the world.
Living in Skysill Beach—a tourist trap/artists’ colony on the Southern California coast—is becoming increasingly problematic for former painter Asher Gale, who has a drinking problem, experiences strange seizures, and sees ghosts wherever he goes. As bizarre crimes plague the town—burglaries, assaults, murders—a gang of Brazilian thugs are searching for Gale, the police have identified him as a possible suspect, and his love interest, Caroline, is nowhere to be found. Gale knows that something very bad is going to happen within a matter of months—and it’s all somehow related to Aeternus, a mythical eternal ghost, who apparently wants to lift a curse and remake the world. Gale, who can exist in the physical world (“flesh me”) or the spiritual plane (“ghost me”), is slowly putting together the pieces of Aeternus’ byzantine plot, but when a series of earthquakes devastates the area, he realizes—too late—that the end of time has begun. Fans of this impressively unique series will rejoice as this new installment takes the storyline into overdrive by radically increasing the pacing, action sequences, and bombshell plot twists. Revelations abound as Hincker reveals deep insights in Gale’s parents’ backstories, Caroline’s past, and the mythology surrounding the Undying Land, a lost world “shared equally by people and ghosts.” Brilliant worldbuilding and insightful character development enhance this fresh take on urban fantasy. Hincker’s style is fluid, focused, and powered by richly descriptive writing that fully immerses readers in the action: “My mouth felt like the inside of a blood sandwich.” Asher’s relationship with Caroline aptly describes this wildly original narrative: “violent, magnetic, orgasmic.”
Propulsive action, an unforgettable lead, and all-consuming storytelling.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9798987630198
Page Count: 324
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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