A fantastic SF thriller with a sincere and important message.
In Sisco’s speculative novel, a young man who wants to find his grandfather’s killer is deemed a threat due to his mental illness.
Several years ago, in an alternate history set in the “American Union of Nations,” a man with a mental illness known as Mirror Resonance Syndrome (MRS) killed people in an act of chaos and extreme violence in the town of Carmichael. In the incident’s aftermath came the Carmichael edicts, which have since subjugated those with MRS (sufferers are hyper-emotional and prone to daydreaming and periods of mental blankness) to being treated as less than human, looked at with suspicion, and forced to live on “ranches” they can never leave. Despite being part of the famous Eastmore family (his grandfather, Jefferson Eastmore, cured cancer), Victor has effectively had his life stolen from him due to his MRS diagnosis. Jefferson died recently, and Victor believes he was murdered—maybe even assassinated—and he wants to find who was responsible. Victor’s mental illness may be the key to the mystery; his friend Ozie tells him that Jefferson was trying to challenge the status quo for the treatment of those with MRS (he wanted to find a cure), a position that’s widely considered radical and may have made him some enemies. The country is also beset by the rise of addiction to drugs known as stims, which have had serious, ongoing consequences for people like Victor’s friend Elena (“She could tell him about the flood of stims the Corps had unleashed to hook as many people as possible”) and, by extension, Victor himself. Sisco has created an immersive cyberpunk world as the setting for an elaborate murder mystery and conspiracy thriller; the copious amount of worldbuilding detail is truly impressive. Victor is a relatable hero with eclectic friends in Ozie and Elena (as well as an herbalist, Pearl, who aids him in dealing with the symptoms of his condition). The world and the characters work together to effectively form a cohesive story about how easy it is for society to classify a group of people as dangerous outsiders.
A fantastic SF thriller with a sincere and important message.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781953954077
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 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
A somber reflection on an increasingly hostile world.
As the world dies, the remnants of the patriarchy and their minions keep right on terrorizing the weak.
Caustically original in the same fashion as her chilling Tender Is the Flesh (2020), Bazterrica’s latest devises an end-of-the-world scenario with a Handmaid’s Tale vibe. The most palpable tragedy is that no matter how the world dies, women always seem to end up with the same sorry fortune. The story is set in an unknown wasteland where all the animals on Earth have perished, with callouts to a mysterious, poisonous haze and a collapsed world. Our narrator is a young woman relegated to sheltering in the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, an isolated, fundamentalist order subservient to an unseen, deity-like “He,” and divided into strict castes. Among these are the Enlightened, kept isolated from the rest of the order behind a mysterious black door; the Chosen, divine and devoted prophets who are ritually mutilated; and the servants marked by contamination, who sit just below the narrator’s caste, the unworthy young women. The story is a little tough to follow due to the narrator’s fragmented memory, not to mention lots of interruptions from the old ultraviolence and body horror. Although men are banned from the cloistered stronghold, it’s a relentlessly sadistic and violent society ruled by the Superior Sister, enforcer of His will and the instrument of punishment up to and including torture and death. The narrator is already mourning Helena, a spirited iconoclast who couldn’t survive under such oppression, when a new arrival named Lucía sparks fresh hope that may prove as fruitless as everything else in this bleak testament to suffering. As a subversion of expectations and an indictment of unchecked power, it’s unflinching and provocative, but readers expecting a satisfying denouement may be left wanting.
A somber reflection on an increasingly hostile world.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781668051887
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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