A memorable combination of science and faith and the determination to unite the two.
Boyarsky’s novel follows one man’s quest to connect technology and the Messiah.
Eighty-year-old retired mathematician Jacob Lazerson lives with his wife, Sarah, in Montreal. The couple doesn’t have much money, but they do have hope for the future: They are part of an Orthodox Jewish community that believes the Messiah may arrive any day. (Jacob fondly recalls the famous Chassidic Rebbe saying “The advent of the Messianic age is only a gesture away.”) Jacob feels he can usher in that event with a little help from science. When Jacob is not observing the Sabbath or attending the synagogue, he runs a computer program of his own design that will, he believes, validate the Bible and “consequently bring about the Messianic Age.” The program works by identifying “associated Hebrew sequences for all exons in the human genome,” which will prove the Bible’s “divine intelligence.” Jacob’s obsessive quest is not the only challenge he faces—it’s 2020, and the Covid-19 virus is on the rise. Jacob must be extra cautious, as some in his religious community forgo precautions such as face masks because they might signal “that their faith in God to protect them was lacking.” Jacob takes readers on a curious, winding path; he’s immersed in a world where people actively anticipate a messianic figure, yet he’s still comfortable with aspects of the modern world like computer programming. Jacob’s love of hard science and religious adherence is an intriguing mix that finds him dreaming about a debate with a famous atheist. Some of the narrative’s flights of fancy can be on the dull side—Jacob’s imagined conversation between the Rebbe and Albert Einstein is not particularly illuminating, for example. Vague insights, such as Einstein saying he recognizes the “impact faith and philosophy have on shaping human values and society,” do not make for page-turning moments. Yet readers will remain curious about what, if anything, Jacob’s struggle will amount to.
A memorable combination of science and faith and the determination to unite the two.Pub Date: Feb. 29, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Bayou Wolf Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 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
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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