An agreeable throwback SF adventure romp, full of peril and alluring ladies.
In Roberts’ SF novel, an amnesiac youth recovered from suspended animation becomes pivotal in Earth’s dealings with a rising empire encroaching from deep space.
In 2290 A.D., a spacefaring crew discovers a centuries-old colony vessel bearing evidence of a violent struggle and housing one survivor in a suspended-animation pod. The “young man” (who was actually born long, long ago) is named Jason Alexander Xavis (“Jax”) and possesses seemingly instinctual fighting skills—but no memories. The pragmatic Captain Barnaby adds Jax to his colorful roster as they proceed to their next destination, a branch of the emerging Locorran Empire. The Locorrans are an advanced and helpful (maybe too helpful) society from deep space claiming to be the successful flowering of one of humankind’s early exploration-colonization projects. They get diplomatically cozy with a disadvantaged and outgunned Earth, but there is something ominous about their brain waves. Readers learn that after Earth suffered ruinous war, at least one rogue visionary and his sympathizers fled the partially destroyed planet, perhaps following an alien summons. Is Jax a remnant of that old expedition? Are the Locorrans the descendants? And why is every Locorran who encounters Jax determined to kill him? The plot grows into an escalating series of cliffhanger situations culminating in a rather campy gladiatorial affair, related in the breathless retro-space-opera tradition that escalates the stakes to the fate of the galaxy. Action is parceled out adroitly enough to distract readers from obvious questions and plot holes, and Roberts slips through a few neat twists in the bargain. Occasional gore intrudes upon the fun, but the sexual content remains mostly tame; this is remarkable considering how desirable women fall for the Buck Rogers–like hero at every opportunity: “Everything was perfect about her—her legs, arms, hips, lips, and torso. It was as if she had stepped right out of one of his dreams.” (It is only a minor complication that memory-less Jax does not know whether or not he is a virgin.)
An agreeable throwback SF adventure romp, full of peril and alluring ladies.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2024
ISBN: 9798334937925
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 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
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
BOOK REVIEW
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