A sprawling and detailed comic adventure.
A group of misfits scrambles to save the world—and themselves—in Torgo’s dystopian debut novel.
In 2614, after several terrible disasters, the only habitable portion of Earth is the Feculent Zone, a wasteland of ruined cities and dry seabed. It’s the home of a great many scavengers, including Gibson Taylor, a man with ocular implants; Flapman, who always covers his head with a bag that has a face drawn on it; and Super Patriot Boy, who wears a kilt and a tricorn hat. It’s also home to all manner of predatory horrors, including gigantic, radioactive Kaiju monsters, huge sandworms, and gangs of violent Perpetubabies (“genetically engineered thugs with adorable and deadly baby bodies”), among others. Flapman finds himself the target of the Bolshevik, a notorious mercenary and repo woman who, for some reason, is after Flapman’s hammer, “Ol’ Smashy.” The most dangerous enemies, however, are those who wield real power. Gibson, for example, runs afoul of the governing Overloards as he attempts to use the Chronoballer, the world’s only remaining time machine, to escape the FZ. The Overloards order him to help an unfriendly artificial intelligence called the Biggens in its quest to find the legendary Cudgel of Malthior, an object that can reputedly seal interdimensional rifts caused by previous time-travel expeditions. In fact, the Cudgel could finally put an end to the troubles that have made Earth such a mess in the first place. To complete their quest, Gibson and his friends—who barely function as a unit in the best of times—must team up with unsavory characters who would ordinarily kill them on sight. Can they manage to find the Cudgel and save the planet?
Torgo’s prose is precise and often funny as it contrasts post-apocalyptic depravity with the quotidian details of life in the 27th century: “The surface was bustling with activity on this lovely, low ambient-toxicity day, and though they saw a number of organisms that they would normally murder, they respected the Scavengeday truce as they traversed the crumbling asphalt of this wretched place.” The sheer amount of imagination in this work will be enough to draw most readers in, as its mythos is rich in pastiche, allusion, absurdity, and wonder. Indeed, the fine worldbuilding helps to balance out the weakness of the characters, who are, sadly, less intriguing than their outfits would indicate. There are many big personalities, but they all tend to be big in a similar way, and most interactions devolve into fits of profanity, violence, or both. The story also takes its time getting going, in part because Torgo pursues frequent digressions that flesh out the fictional universe but don’t further the plot. The book’s satirical tone, too, loses some of its appeal after more than 300 pages. There’s a lot to enjoy here, though, and some readers are sure to love every minute of it. Even those who might wish for a tighter, more character-driven story will look forward to the author’s future offerings.
A sprawling and detailed comic adventure.Pub Date: July 1, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 361
Publisher: Infernal Rift Press
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”
A stranger comes to town, and a beloved storyteller plays this creative-writing standby for all it’s worth.
Hilderbrand fans, a vast and devoted legion, will remember Blond Sharon, the notorious island gossip. In what is purportedly the last of the Nantucket novels, Blond Sharon decides to pursue her lifelong dream of fiction writing. In the collective opinion of the island—aka the “cobblestone telegraph”—she’s qualified. “Well, we think, she’s certainly demonstrated her keen interest in other people’s stories, the seedier and more salacious, the better.” Blond Sharon’s first assignment in her online creative writing class is to create a two-person character study, and Hilderbrand has her write up the two who arrive on the ferry in an opening scene of the book, using the same descriptors Hilderbrand has. Amusingly, the class is totally unimpressed. “‘I found it predictable,’ Willow said. ‘Like maybe Sharon used ChatGPT with the prompt “Write a character study about two women getting off the ferry, one prep and one punk.”’” Blond Sharon abandons these characters, but Hilderbrand thankfully does not. They are Kacy Kapenash, daughter of retiring police chief Ed Kapenash (the other swan song referred to by the title), and her new friend Coco Coyle, who has given up her bartending job in the Virgin Islands to become a “personal concierge” for the other strangers-who-have-come-to-town. These are the Richardsons, Bull and Leslee, a wild and wealthy couple who have purchased a $22 million beachfront property and plan to take Nantucket by storm. As the book opens, their house has burned down during an end-of-summer party on their yacht, and Coco is missing, feared both responsible for the fire and dead. Though it’s the last weekend of his tenure, Chief Ed refuses to let the incoming chief, Zara Washington, take this one over. The investigation goes forward in parallel with a review of the summer’s intrigues, love affairs, and festivities. Whatever else you can say about Leslee Richardson, she knows how to throw a party, and Hilderbrand is just the writer to design her invitations, menus, themes, playlists, and outfits. And that hot tub!
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780316258876
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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SEEN & HEARD
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