A rollicking, otherworldly tale that’s only just getting started.
A young warrior battles sinister forces in a world besieged by darkness in Varona’s fantasy debut and series launch.
Lady Eve was once a queen in her utopian world of Eden. But evil has corrupted the Age of Light, and Eve now leads the Reclaimers in fighting to bring that Light back. A prophetic dream shows her that her youngest son, Seth, is the Chosen One who will ultimately triumph over the darkness. Eve trains him for combat, but a sudden attack at the Reclaimers’ base leaves most of them dead, and the boy is left alone. Six years later, Seth wanders the landscape with his trusty dog, Chase. He resolves to avenge his mother and all who’ve suffered, starting with taking out a diabolical group called the Hand of Sin. This pits him against the likes of Gomorrah, the Gluttonous King of Sodom, along with any number of deadly creatures and lethal mechanical beings. Luckily, he gathers allies along the way, including the skilled warrior Valentina and Ryder, who leads a band of “messengers” on their “speedy vehicles,” which resemble motorcycles. The author delivers an epic series opener reminiscent of the video games that served as his inspiration: Seth drinks a rejuvenating elixir; embarks on a side quest (winning a race to get a ride to the kingdom of Babylonia); and goes head-to-head with boss-level baddies like Gomorrah. The heroes engage in copious exhilarating action scenes as they battle ghouls, monsters sporting large “bone-like spikes,” and seriously depraved villains. Despite all of these evils, the story often feels lighthearted. Chase regularly converses with Seth; the text translates his barks (which Seth understands). The prose includes contemporary-sounding dialogue, breezy similes (a tremor shakes barracks “like a plucked guitar string”), and one-liners. The explosive final act ends on a stellar cliffhanger that will leave readers craving a sequel.
A rollicking, otherworldly tale that’s only just getting started.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2022
ISBN: 9781639887361
Page Count: 596
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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