This insightful, engaging SF tale argues that it’s never too late to fix the world.
This post-apocalyptic novel about star-crossed lovers emphasizes the resilience of the human spirit.
Weik von Mossner’s SF tale is set in the near future in a world where climate change rightly has struck back hard at humanity. The Romeo in this case is Jake Alvaro, who works for NY SAFE, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security that acquires high-priority medical supplies for the New York metropolitan area. Every morning, Jake goes out of his way to drop by the coffee shop Soma so that he can visit his secret Juliet, Shavir Tayard, the woman with a “smile he never knew what to make of.” But there’s one big problem. In addition to working at Soma and a community garden, Shavir is considered a domestic terrorist. That’s because she’s part of a gang that steals puppies being raised as illegal animal meat in a country that shut down industrial meat production and switched to plant-based items. The group illegally gives the pooches to animal lovers rather than the police. One of these dogs is Shavir’s constant companion, a mastiff named Sam. After Jake and Shavir become involved, their secrets are exposed as they meet the people in each other’s lives. These include Jake’s cousin Carrie; her cop husband, Dan; their sickly daughter, Zoe; and Shavir’s canine-stealing friends. Coming from two diametrically opposed worlds, the lovers continually break up and reunite as society crumbles around them because scarcities multiply. As weather extremes caused by climate change have become a daily part of life, Weik von Mossner takes an incisive look at the not-too-distant future. Daily temperatures have soared, and flooding and wildfires have ravaged regions across the globe. In addition, the weather has disrupted worldwide shipping. At the heart of this thought-provoking novel are two damaged people trying to build a relationship while working at cross purposes to help society amid dealing with a broken system’s inequities. Jake and Shavir are surrounded by friends and colleagues only too happy to point out why they shouldn’t click as a couple. Yet their biggest obstacles are self-doubts and a world that is falling apart. The author has created an engrossing book that holds out hope despite all the mistakes made by humans.
This insightful, engaging SF tale argues that it’s never too late to fix the world.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9783982496917
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Elzwhere Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2022
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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