Snappy and amusingly picaresque, with plenty of puzzles to keep readers coming back for more: while this one’s satisfyingly...
Britisher Brosnan (The Sky Lords, 1991, etc.) takes a crack at an old SF chestnut: the multigenerational starship whose inhabitants don’t know they’re on a starship.
The haughty, cruel Elite, with their aircars and miraculous weapons, ruled Urba’s medieval patchwork of contending states—until the Day of Wonder when the power failed, aircars tumbled from the sky, and the Mundanes vengefully fell upon the Elite survivors. Proud, bold young Prince Kender and his reluctant sidekick, Jad the failed court jester, undertake to travel to the Elite Citadel and try to learn exactly what befell their erstwhile rulers. Posing as mercenaries intent on joining Lord Camarra’s army, Ken rescues a distressed damsel. Ken falls instantly and hopelessly in love with tough, resourceful Alucia—an Elite. Equally curious as to why the power failed, Alucia plays along with Ken’s obsession while educating the smarter Jad concerning Urba’s true nature. After various adventures they reach the Citadel, though as Camarra’s prisoners; the conqueror takes all three for Elite, therefore they’re expendable. Ken, Jad, and Alucia must lead an expedition inside the Citadel, urged on by Camarra’s surly troops. Once they’re inside, the power comes on, and hordes of scorpion-like machines—not Elite devices—scuttle forth to shred the troops! The three evade the scorpion-things and arm themselves with Elite weapons, but thoughts of further resistance evaporate when a second wave, this time of huge scorpions, emerges to destroy the rest of Camarra’s army and devastate Urba. What’s going on? Has Urba itself been invaded by aliens?
Snappy and amusingly picaresque, with plenty of puzzles to keep readers coming back for more: while this one’s satisfyingly complete, sequels will follow.Pub Date: May 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-575-07492-2
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Gollancz/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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