Lacking the storytelling virtuosity of World War Z or the emotional impact of The Passage, the novel suffers from a woefully...
A young survivor of the zombie pandemic finds himself thrust outside the comfort and safety of post-apocalyptic Manhattan and into the wastelands of America in this coming-of-age novel from Wellington (The Hydra Protocol, 2014, etc.)
Nineteen-year-old Finnegan has been living what’s left of the good life in what’s left of Manhattan, protected from the occasional zombie living in the outer boroughs by polluted rivers and the lack of transportation in post-crisis America. He’s grown up, with no memory of the pandemic, in a survivor’s settlement in Times Square, raised by his parents, fishing in the old subway tunnels and scavenging food from abandoned apartments, listening to the radio for reports from the Army and the bits of the old government that are still viable. That is, until the day his mother turns into a zombie, a result of the virus’s 20-year gestation period. Finn is now suspected of harboring the virus as well. He’s given a plus-sign tattoo—proof of his positive status—and a ride to a medical camp in Ohio. But when he finds his government-issued driver murdered at the far end of the George Washington Bridge, Finn has to set out on his own. He quickly makes an enemy of a looter named Red Kate and just as quickly makes friends with a survivor named Adare, a big man with a big car and a harem of young girls he uses both for sex and for looting abandoned buildings for swag to trade to the Army for gas and food. Among the harem is Kylie, a teen girl whose deadened personality Finn somehow finds irresistible. Finn’s halfhearted attempts at rabble-rousing to free Kylie and her sisters ends badly for Adare and—when the ragtag group of misfits ends up at the Akron medical camps at last—for the girls as well. All except Kylie, of course. Finn’s principled attempts at an old-fashioned strike are laughable at best. (“My life was less important than what was happening here. Than what could happen, if the cards played out right,” Finn says, nobly.) In Akron he’s reunited with his old Manhattan buddy Ike (the kid who killed Finn’s mother when she zombied out) when Ike helps the positives break out of camp, and Finn and Kylie lead him and the rest into the brave new world they’ll make together—if they can survive Red Kate and the deadly warload named Anubis.
Lacking the storytelling virtuosity of World War Z or the emotional impact of The Passage, the novel suffers from a woefully underdeveloped and naïve hero, a love story without an ounce of heat, and a carload of ancient zombie tropes just begging to be put out of their misery.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-231537-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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