A futuristic quest with an offbeat prehistoric twist but uneven execution.
In Hopkins’ SF sequel to The Golden Ellipse (2021), Owen and Rachel Haig must save humanity again in an action-packed treasure hunt.
The story begins 90 million years ago, when a massive spaceship is abandoned in the jungles of the future Brazil. Within it are priceless gems, Cretaceous-era dinosaurs, and a pathogen bomb. Fast-forward to 1928, when explorer Charles Pike rediscovers the ship near the Brazilian city of Fordlândia and maps out its location in a notebook; it’s then kept in a London lockbox until 2044, when the world is reeling from a horrific alien invasion. The villainous CEO of SATStar Industries, Griffin Pike (descendant of Charles), makes sure that the incident is blamed on the secretive organization the Powers That Be (PTB), which he regards as an obstacle to his quest for power. In the aftermath, Owen and Rachel Haig are reunited; they later join the PTB, which immediately sends them to uncover the lost spaceship. Meanwhile, PTB administrator Nina Madsen and special agent Terrence O. Flynn Gilliam, who were previously Owen and Rachel’s companions, are held hostage and tortured on a different spaceship. Luckily, they receive unexpected assistance and eventually rejoin Owen and Rachel’s travel party; to combat the jungle’s many threats (including aliens, dinos, and cannibalistic humans), they join forces with Griffin’s team. Later, this alliance frays, and a free-for-all determines the fate of humanity. During the story, a character quips, “We just went from Star Wars to Indiana Jones in a heartbeat,” and this description aptly summarizes what readers can expect as they make their way through this adventure tale, which includes plenty of snappy dialogue. Newcomers are likely to find themselves lost without the additional context of the first installment of the series, however. The first half of the story struggles with overly slow pacing, and the jumps between different time periods are sometimes jarring. The coverage of LGBTQ+ material is mixed; some queer characters are likable and heroic, while others are problematic.
A futuristic quest with an offbeat prehistoric twist but uneven execution.Pub Date: May 4, 2023
ISBN: 9798986233826
Page Count: 616
Publisher: Hopart Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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