A delightfully silly and bizarre superhero tale, with an ending that practically guarantees further installments.
After mysteriously losing his abilities, a psychic superhero tries to prevent an assassination and thwart a powerful villain in this comedy-action sequel.
To protect his loved ones, Edger Bonkovich pretends to be dead after the evil organization Nostradamus destroys his house. He’s living in Burbank, California, with spy Mary Thomas of the Global Strategic Peace Organization Taskforce as his protector and cover wife. Edger has the ability to access the Collective Unconscious, a “psychic stratum” of everyone living or dead. Bruce Lee, for example, can temporarily take control, affording Edger martial arts deftness. But when Nostradamus agents suddenly attack Edger and Mary at home, his power inexplicably vanishes. He only has access to Nigel Willianbottom, a Brit with few discernible skills. Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Watson is planning to admit he’s a Nostradamus official and name others. GSPOT boss Alexandra Hamilton assigns Edger and Mary the task of preventing the prime minister’s potential assassination. But Alex distrusts Mary, who confesses Watson is her father, whom she wouldn’t mind killing. Edger soon learns of a supervillain who’s capable of reading minds. Despite his diminished psychic abilities, Edger has a ring that, combined with the super-serum in his blood, covers him in a super-suit for inevitable confrontations with baddies. Beem (Edger, 2018, etc.) loads his second series installment with vivid characters and subplots. Many of them ultimately link to Edger (for example, a Russian assassin) or have a pre-existing connection, like Fabio Jimenez, Edger’s best friend who believes he’s dead. While readers may have trouble keeping up with the influx of characters, the story retains a steady pace of action and high jinks. These include clones, possible aliens, and a Collective Unconscious message from Edger’s supposedly dead father. Humor is in abundance, from mostly unhelpful Nigel to appearances by real-life figures, including Freud and Vladimir Putin. But there are sincere moments as well, as the goofy but likable protagonist expresses genuine feelings for Mary and misses his friends and family.
A delightfully silly and bizarre superhero tale, with an ending that practically guarantees further installments.Pub Date: March 31, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 305
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2019
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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