At its best, Sinisalo’s novel engages in a fierce discussion of ecological choices while also imagining an unusually...
A new novel by Finnish author Sinisalo (Birdbrain, 2011, etc.) uses harrowing ecological collapse and an idyllic parallel world to examine both the possibility of global disaster and one man’s surreal, life-altering experience of grief.
A successful businessman and small-time beekeeper, Orvo lives in a world pushed slightly further into a future where poor environmental and agricultural decisions have had devastating effects. Food shortages and riots plague the United States, and the disintegration of the American economy is beginning to destabilize the entire developed world. Symptoms of catastrophic ecological damage, including the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of bees, spread until they reach Orvo’s own small hives in Finland. When Orvo’s teenage son, Eero, a fervent animal rights activist, gets killed during an idealistic stunt, Orvo’s grief over his son and the loss of his bees leads him to discover a portal to an unspoiled parallel world where he hopes to find both. The novel alternates between Orvo’s quiet, grief-muffled voice and breathless, increasingly fanatical blog entries written by Eero as a member of the “Animalist Revolutionary Army.” These two contrasting threads allow the story to both withhold essential emotional detail in a reflection of Orvo’s trauma and offer a flood of disturbing factual information about animal rights. While the novel often balances the voices well, playing them against each other to guide the reader’s sympathies and understanding, at other times it fractures into an overwhelming number of elements and unnecessary attempts to obscure aspects of the plot. Orvo’s discovery of the parallel world becomes an unexpected anchor, giving a concrete expression to his grief and reverence for the natural world and drawing on the fascinating, cross-cultural mythology of bees.
At its best, Sinisalo’s novel engages in a fierce discussion of ecological choices while also imagining an unusually picturesque, Orpheus-tinged search for love beyond death.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7206-1004-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Peter Owen
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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