A terrifying account of global disorder and American decline.
In a dystopian future, a secretive government project threatens a small town.
Resurrection, a modestly sized town in Colorado, has seen better days; its mine closed down, essentially killing its economy. Much to his surprise, Sheriff Rick Johnson one day discovers a peculiar fence erected around the abandoned mine and a heavily armed crew guarding activity inside, both frenetically and furtively conducted. Hank Keefer, the man in charge of the band, convinces Johnson to keep the project to himself for a couple of days, promising to donate millions to Resurrection in exchange for his cooperation. But during a major festival, Keefer and his men commandeer the town and forcibly quarantine it. Keefer reveals that he’s actually a colonel with the Army’s Special Weapons Division and that he’s been using the mine to develop a deadly biological weapon; as a result of a mishap, a toxin was inadvertently released in the air. The toxin has the potential to wipe out Resurrection’s entire population, but Keefer assures the residents he can save them with a vaccine he has in plentiful supply. Johnson, however, is skeptical from the start and suspects that Keefer’s true intentions are nefarious. Meanwhile, Johnson, a war hero suffering from the trauma of the violent campaigns he participated in, tries to find normality in Resurrection. He carries on a slow but tender romance with a local, Dahlia Stevens, the mother of a young boy, but struggles to reconcile with Cassie Baker, his former paramour, a scientist who returns to town to inspect the mine. Gunhus (Where Are Your Shoes, 2017, etc.) adroitly designs a frightening world upended by geopolitical chaos; the United States, the victim of catastrophic terrorist attacks, struggles to bring order to global madness: “The Chinese invasions through Asia, the instability in Russia, the chaos in South America, the street-to-street fighting against the Jihadis in European capitals, all of it showed the average American a world sliding toward darkness.” Johnson is a memorable and relatable hero, hardened by war and loss but astonishingly hopeful. This tale offers a deliciously creepy vision of a grim tomorrow rendered harrowingly plausible.
A terrifying account of global disorder and American decline.Pub Date: June 5, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Seven Guns Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
