Though the Korean War hasn’t generally been regarded as a major departure point in human history by alternate-world...
Second part of the alternate-world-war trilogy (Bombs Away, 2015) whose entirely plausible conjecture was: what if President Harry Truman had used nuclear weapons during the Korean War?
Well, here he did, disastrously instigating a nuclear war. Atomic bombs have already devastated cities in China, Russia, and Europe, and on America’s west coast. Despite a few set pieces showing us the world’s leaders (though not as they formulate their decisions) and politics outside the war (the specter of McCarthyism), Turtledove once again develops his narrative via a substantial cast of ordinary people, both civilians and military, and their particular circumstances. Fascinating concurrences emerge. In Germany, currently occupied by Soviet invaders, Luisa Hozzel, the wife of a WWII Wehrmacht soldier now fighting alongside the Americans, gets sent to a Siberian labor camp. By contrast, Marian Staley and her daughter cope with life in a refugee camp outside now-radioactive Seattle. The members of Boris Gribkov’s Soviet bomber crew spend their free time drinking vodka and thwarting the political police, while Bruce McNulty, an American bomber pilot stationed in England, tiptoes toward romance with a widowed British pub owner. Elsewhere, other characters familiar from the first book experience action in the European and Korean theaters, some finding themselves allied with former enemies while others fight against opponents who once were comrades. In still other places less affected by the bombs and the battles, some semblance of normal life prevails. Even if he’s not creating completely memorable personalities, Turtledove’s patented, highly effective methodology—a steady sequence of sharply etched passages allowing him to accrue telling detail around each individual actor—ensures readers become attached to them and invested in their futures.
Though the Korean War hasn’t generally been regarded as a major departure point in human history by alternate-world theorists, Turtledove’s surmise reminds us just how dangerously unpredictable the nuclear option remains.Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-39073-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2017
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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