A well-written and compelling SF novel, with an older, wiser, battle-hardened hero.
Earth maintains an uneasy peace pact with an alien race in Olson’s SF novel.
Mikail Benson remembers the war with the AranthChi well; it still haunts his sleep (“In his worst dreams, the dead floated in the void with him, close enough to touch, too late to help”). The long conflict saw much suffering and many lives lost…and its end was just as much of a surprise as its beginning. After years of bloodshed, the alien race suddenly wanted to talk of peace, and of working together to share information and technology. Mikail found himself no longer a soldier—now he runs the Office of Alien Technologies, reviewing the questions and answers that go from humans to AranthChi and back. Despite what so many others seem to think, Mikail is not convinced peace will last, even 36 years later. It turns out he’s right: Marsh(ee), the alpha male of Least Clan of the AranthChi, uses the fact that he is far enough out in Aranth-run space (and all but forgotten) to wage a “faux war with humanity.” Just as Mikail uncovers evidence of the AranthChi treachery and begins to formulate a plan, the aliens’ High Council of Great Clans learns of Marsh(ee)’s planned revolt and alerts their ships to plan to attack the humans in retaliation for aiding a traitor. Mikail might be too late to save humanity—if they couldn’t defeat a small fraction of the AranthChi forces years ago, what hope do they have against the whole fleet? In this riveting SF yarn, readers are treated to diabolical political plots and a thrilling race to save the world as we know it. Even with the human characters evolved to enjoy longer lifespans, it’s enjoyable to see an older hero in an adventure story (Mikail is 70). His experience in the war still affects him emotionally, giving his character a level of depth that feels utterly genuine and admirable.
A well-written and compelling SF novel, with an older, wiser, battle-hardened hero.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Belle Isle Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2023
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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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