A blistering and relevant near-future military-SF yarn.
In 2028, war in Ukraine has mutated into a media spectacle for online audiences in Marcelionis’ speculative novel.
Setting his tale against an embattled Ukraine backdrop, the author refuses to spell the words “russian” or “putin” with capital letters, explaining that it’s “a universal way of expressing passive anger and disdain toward the aggressor and its leader. This tiny token of defiance is used in our daily lives, even in semi-official communications.” The narrative unfolds in 2028, when the Ukraine war is at a stalemate yet grinds on thanks to livestreaming multimedia and avid online followers; the fighting has been monetized for internet consumption, and individual combatants and their live feeds are viewed worldwide in real time. In the Ukraine “gray zone,” 49-year-old globetrotting Martynas, redubbed “Master,” is a lone soldier, a Lithuanian who served in the French Foreign Legion and went to the Ukraine to fight against the Russian invaders he has despised since his soviet-vassal youth. Master has an advantage over other teams: A powerful, rather childish tech-billionaire named Eaton Tusk is his patron. With the help of beautiful, sympathetic doctor Atari Hunter, Eaton implants Master with advanced brainwave-control chips for remote surveillance-combat drones, human Wi-fi access, and a heavily tricked-out bionic hand. Back skirmishing among abandoned factory ruins, where a number of fellow streamers have gone MIA, Master plays cat and mouse games with pursuers, including brutal archnemesis Davai Lama. The lean, caustic, first-person narrative is enhanced by moody illustrations (credited to Midjourney) and supported by extensive footnotes to the translated-from-Lithuanian prose—some are a tad unnecessary (we probably all know Hello Kitty), but most convey the slang and worldview of those resisting the Russian jackboot (Ukrainians refer to Russian troops as “orcs”). Sitting at the intersection of cyberpunk and techno-thriller/combat SF, this is an auspicious debut, whether taken as brisk escapism or a warning about the modern era of globalist imperialist dictators.
A blistering and relevant near-future military-SF yarn.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9786090806715
Page Count: 230
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
