A nonstop actioner with cosmic overtones painted in consistently broad strokes.
Those incredible coincidences Carl Jung dubbed synchronicities lie at the heart of Koontz’s latest—if it can be said to have a heart.
Twenty-four years after the deaths of her mother and father only weeks apart drove her from Montana to live with her Aunt Katherine in Santa Fe, Joanna Chase hears a spectral voice bidding her return. At the same time, tech billionaire Liam O’Hara, who now owns Rustling Willows, the ranch where Joanna spent her childhood, hires Seattle PI Wyatt Rider to investigate a mysterious disturbance that spooked O’Hara’s family on a recent visit. And no wonder, for there’s no lack of spooky manifestations in the area. Embezzling chemist Harley Spondollar’s house collapsed moments after he stepped outdoors; Jimmy Alvarez, the childhood friend Joanna’s somehow forgotten despite his memorable birth defects, has been touched by dark forces; and Asher Optime, formerly associated with Xanthus Toller’s Restoration Movement, has branched out on his own quest to restore the planet to its natural balance by eliminating all humankind (the list of victims he’s abducted and killed so far stands at five). Eventually the oddball heroes, joined by good-guy hacker Kenny Deetle, his more-than-one-night-stand Leigh Ann Bruce, his wingman, Dr. Ganesh Patel, and Artimis Selene, Patel’s partner in the secret Project Olivaw who yearns to be more, make common cause against the odder-ball villains. But although Koontz repeatedly and oracularly invokes the awesome powers of synchronicity to explain the mesh of connections among the cast members, this remains very much a pickup ballgame, highly effective from scene to scene but in hindsight as evanescent as a mirage.
A nonstop actioner with cosmic overtones painted in consistently broad strokes.Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1992-7
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
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 weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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