Complex, conceptual speculative fiction that’s rendered with breathtaking ease.
In Tobal’s SF novel, a 20-something man discovers a technique for traveling between alternate universes—which, in the long run, could cause a cosmic apocalypse.
Bartender Sam Cattan and tattoo artist Una Malia Owens are a couple in New York City. One day, Sam accidentally discovers that, among Una’s collection of pagan god idols, there’s a particular effigy of a fertility deity that has the power to teleport them to alternate realities; in their case, the worlds seem based on the setting of whatever pornographic videos they’re watching. (Thankfully, the descriptions are not overly graphic.) This becomes the recreational foundation of their affair, but it ends badly when Sam cheats on Una in one of the X-rated universes. Tormented by loss, guilt, and desire, Sam starts questing through other settings, hoping to find one where he and Una didn’t break up; in the process, he learns more about universe-jumping and the surprisingly large number of people—including members of a shadowy government regulatory agency—who also know the trick. Although Sam seems like an ordinary guy driven by love, the ease with which he traverses the multiverse signifies that he's much, much more—and therefore unimaginably dangerous. Tobal’s narrative is a hell of a ride—and, indeed, Hell is one of the first places Sam visits. It’s a tale that’s ambitious on a scale that brings to mind the works of Olaf Stapledon, laying out a map of reality based on potentially infinite numbers of universes and choices—although in Sam’s case, whether he possesses free will in his cross-dimensional rampages is seriously in question. Ultimately, the novel delivers a lucid, credible, mechanistic explanation for its multiverse and its human wanderers. Genre readers may be reminded of Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic The Lathe of Heaven (1971), but this book is very much its own creature, combining science, philosophy, Lovecraft-ian horror, dark humor, romantic tragedy, and the origin of all creation. It’s a tall order, but Tobal keeps the plates spinning in multiple dimensions at once.
Complex, conceptual speculative fiction that’s rendered with breathtaking ease.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2022
ISBN: 9781958729526
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Mindstir Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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BOOK REVIEW
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