Rollins (Amazonia, 2002) writes with intelligence, clarity, and a refreshing sense of humor. He front-loads his best chills...
Cover-to-cover Arctic action, around and inside Ice Station Grendel: chases and fights in the snow, on the ice, in the air; hungry bears; evil Russians; predatory sea mammals.
Aboard the Polar Sentinel, Captain Gregory Perry and his crew of soldiers and scientists (including his beautiful lover, Dr. Amanda Reynolds) discover an abandoned Russian research station north of the Arctic Circle. The elaborate, six-level Ice Station Grendel has been out of use for more than fifty years, but high-tech cameras detect signs of life there. Meanwhile, in nearby Alaska, Fish and Game warden Matthew Pike rescues Seattle reporter Craig Teague from a small plane crash. Abruptly, they’re being pursued by Russian thugs shooting to kill. Matt and Craig narrowly escape, abetted some by the aforementioned bears, and take refuge with Matt’s bristly father-in-law John and ex-wife Jennifer, sheriff for the Nunamiut and Inupiat tribes. The surviving Russians remain in hot pursuit, reinforced by new soldiers. These are dispatched by Viktor Petkov, admiral and commander of the Russian Northern Fleet and son of the mastermind behind Ice Station Grendel, led away at gunpoint in 1948. Petkov plans both to retake the research facility, thus resuming his father’s work on cryogenics, and to eliminate Matt and company, who threaten this operation’s secrecy. At Ice Station Grendel, meanwhile, Greg and Amanda make a startling discovery: a school of ambulocetus natans (ancestor of the whale), many recently defrosted and highly predatory; hence the name of the station. The beasts’ first victim is perky postgrad Lacy Devlin, stalked while speed-skating for her morning exercise. In short order, scientists and soldiers become whale food, hunted down and devoured all over the mazelike outpost. Story proceeds in quick time-lined cuts, from these perspectives and a couple more: American troops prepare to seize the station and a Russian force encroaches with the same aim.
Rollins (Amazonia, 2002) writes with intelligence, clarity, and a refreshing sense of humor. He front-loads his best chills but stocks the last chunk of the book (his second hardcover) with surprise twists.Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-052156-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
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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