A tale that provides readers with a penetrating and thought-provoking glimpse into a possible not-so-distant future.
Jones’ debut SF novel sees a rogue geneticist on the run from government agencies as his illegally engineered twins reach a crisis point in their evolutionary programming.
In the year 2050, the U.S. government centralized the funding of biomedical research and established a federal institute that focused on risk-free projects. Those working on the field’s cutting edge knuckled under, left the country, or went off-grid, operating illegally in makeshift laboratories. Gifted geneticist Howard Wake took the latter course, and by the year 2070, he has 8-year-old twins—Aurie and Py—incubated ex vivo using eggs stolen from colleague Jacqueline Witt. He’s implanted Py and Aurie with CRISPR, a virus engineered to quickly evolve the kids at a genomic level. Unbeknownst to Howard, the eggs’ special property—an embedded “kill switch,” designed to terminate pregnancies should embryos develop certain abnormalities—are in the twins’ DNA. Thus, the CRISPR evolutionary imperative is at odds with a safeguard that could kill Aurie and Py. A medical emergency pushes the Wake family into the open; on the run in New England, they seek refuge with Howard’s reclusive older brother, Abel. Jacqueline, meanwhile, discovers the theft of her eggs and tracks Howard down, determined to meet her biological children—one of whom is starting to become something beyond human. Over the course of this novel, Jones crafts a narrative that makes its concepts clear without belaboring the scientific aspects. Howard and Jacqueline are likable, deftly drawn characters, and Aurie and Py are similarly engaging—precocious, sometimes otherworldly, but still recognizably children. The society in which they live is a dark but believable extrapolation from present-day attitudes toward research funding, and the novel handles its moral questions sensitively and fairly throughout. It’s a testament to Jones’ skillful storytelling that readers may find themselves unsure how they want Aurie’s transformation to play out in the end.
A tale that provides readers with a penetrating and thought-provoking glimpse into a possible not-so-distant future.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2022
ISBN: 9798986384900
Page Count: 361
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2023
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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