An intelligent SF tale with a high-stakes big pharma backdrop and skillful character development.
In this debut novel, the failed tests of a sleep-aid pill lead an ensemble of characters to the amazing discovery of humanity’s origins and possible extraterrestrial interference.
The Cooks, a husband-and-wife team, begin a trilogy with this hybrid of corporate-charged medical thriller and SF alien tale. For eight years, Cooper Delaney has been a bankable and industrious doctor for the struggling pharmaceutical giant Proteus. Now, he is frustrated that his surefire sleep-aid medication Noctural is not working on human test subjects. As Cooper risks his career to salvage the project, a parallel plotline brings into his life reporter Mandolin Grace, whose latest story may be crackpot science or may just alter humankind’s destiny. A few leading geneticists are proposing that the human race has literally evolved as far as it can go and has reached a stagnating plateau of physical/intellectual achievement. There’s a corollary: Homo sapiens were preceded on prehistoric Earth by a superrace that sensed approaching extinctions and fled into outer space, leaving DNA traces and atavisms behind in an attempt to perpetuate the species. Thus, aliens exist—and may still be around, on and off the planet. Key evidence is a rare “Z” chromosome, supplementing the typical XY genetic markers. The United States government takes the theory seriously, making it the subject of a legendary “File 710.” The dissolute and wealthy Saudi Khalid Al Gamdi will stop at nothing, including murder, to learn more about it—and he is the secret investor propping up Proteus. A sudden, global epidemic of insomnia, connected to all of this, raises the stakes. Disparate strands and players take time to come together in the authors’ double (maybe triple?) helix weave of international locales and capers. While the material is related in Dan Brown–esque minichapters, the emphasis is less on exciting chases (though there is a humdinger, set in Paris) and more on deep dives into character motivations and relationships, complete with a shoutout to The Great Gatsby. Results echo both Zenna Henderson’s The People collections and John Farris’ Fury series as well as numerous other upscale SF entries in which superman-hood does not necessarily mean capes and Kryptonite or flashy special effects. This segment wraps up with most of the narrative strands disconnected, and invested readers will be kept up at night waiting for more.
An intelligent SF tale with a high-stakes big pharma backdrop and skillful character development. (author bios)Pub Date: July 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5255-6544-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2020
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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PERSPECTIVES
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