An offbeat and refreshingly different cybercrime mystery.
In DiMaria’s debut SF novel, a nanotech-implant corporation faces the possibility of frightening, potentially fatal hacker attacks.
In the future metropolis of New Lucien, the mighty Goaldened corporation was formed by four college friends. They perfected implantable nanotechnology known as “bumps” that aim to alleviate such things as poor vision and geriatric decline, among other things, and generally enhance physical performance. Some protesters complain that such enhancements are degrading humanity, and some resist when the government makes some bumps mandatory. Still, the business prospers. Asymta Tik, a social media influencer and the daughter of one of Goaldened’s founders in the public face of the company, and her body holds the latest and best biotech. But behind the scenes, other Goaldened researchers are suffering from serious, strokelike symptoms. The company leadership can’t ignore the possibility that a malevolent group may be hacking into the tech and targeting top scientists. Even Asymta suffers from cryptic, anomalous thoughts, apparently beamed in from elsewhere (“come to the water, come to the sea, we are onto the trees—the copse are on their way”). Asymta pursues a love affair with co-worker Sydney, who’s also descended from Goaldened’s hierarchy and in danger himself. What is the nature of the conspiracy and who are the attackers? There are all the makings here for a cyberpunk potboiler, but DiMaria manages to evoke a world of tomorrow while avoiding William Gibson–style clichés involving virtual reality plug-ins, neon-noir urban environments, sinister multinationals, or excessive violence. However, it’s hard to tell if this book’s tone is meant to be mildly comical as, for instance, a very old school police detective with zero technological savvy bumbles through a feckless investigation. Until fairly close to the finale, the material is also rather low on thrills. However, it still manages to feel like a modest breath of fresh air in a subgenre that too often feels like reboots of the same operating system.
An offbeat and refreshingly different cybercrime mystery.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-55-843574-0
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2021
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
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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