An expansive SF anthology featuring stories and poems that will leave readers excited for the larger project.
This SF anthology creates a new universe for both readers and creators to explore.
Editors Hodapp and Viola present an expansive, “community-owned” franchise that comes with a glossary and set canon rules enabling the authors in the anthology to create their own in-universe stories and poems and allowing game makers, other writers, and artists to get involved in this media-bending adventure as well. To get the “Unioverse” rolling, and to give readers a taste of what sort of excitement can be found within the expansive setting, this book collects stories and poems from multiple authors. The yarns tell of colorful characters including Malcolm Orion, who is brave enough to investigate the strange, pod-like object humans found on Mars; Reyu the Reaper, who has been stuck in stasis for millennia and cannot remember his life before; Arky, who uses technology to restore his younger body; and Callum Emnat, who tries to discover how a glacier could drive an entire planet mad. Poems speak of the horrors of “Zero Hour” (“Gods, the fog got worse each time, murky and sometimes bloody in each new body”) and of “Those That Wear Skin,” invaders taking the appearance of the native peoples they infiltrate. Jennett’s beautiful full-color digital illustrations make the anthology a true multi-media experience. While each story can stand alone, as each author effectively gives the reader a taste of the larger world, there are connections between the pieces as some characters pop up in multiple entries (the poems may not always make sense to those that are unfamiliar with the larger concept of the Unioverse). Some may find the idea overwhelming, but what the creators have brought to life here is more than worth the effort.
An expansive SF anthology featuring stories and poems that will leave readers excited for the larger project.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9798988082743
Page Count: 488
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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