A well-written political romance that reflects the growing dangers in our social divisions.
Two men on opposite sides of a bitter conflict find unexpected love in Patrick’s novel.
In the near-future United States, Daniel Ridley has grown up isolated in his Christian Evangelical bubble and been fed lies about the world. He and his friend Marcus are sent to Boston on two different missions. The first is to proselytize and bring people into their religion; the second is the much darker task of trying to find an individual who, they have been told, is responsible for kidnapping and murder. As Daniel and Marcus set about their work, they learn more about the real world and other people’s lives. One of the first people they meet in Boston is Jaxtyn Keller, a Buddhist gay man confident in his sexuality and worldview who is committed to hearing out different perspectives. Jaxtyn’s handsome appearance triggers Daniel’s struggle with same-sex attraction, and the missionary keeps finding reasons to spend time with the Buddhist. Daniel’s intense personality draws Jaxtyn into becoming closer with him, despite Daniel’s insistence that they are sinners and must seek God’s forgiveness. Meanwhile, Jaxtyn’s friend Skylar has become involved in a group calling themselves the New Riders whose members risk their safety by going into unfriendly territory to give queer youth useful information. Daniel’s secret mission and Skylar’s activism will lead to a series of violent encounters no one is braced for. Patrick has envisioned a convincing future for the United States in which the federal government doesn’t regulate or restrain state governments’ religious extremism or racist policies (“Even here in New England, the religious fundamentalists were gaining a solid foothold”). Daniel and Jaxtyn are realistic characters with complex personalities—particularly Daniel, who has a distinct and recognizable arc; he begins as a very repressed character with a narrow view of the world, and over the course of the book (mainly through his conversations with Jaxtyn and Marcus) he finds a different light to follow.
A well-written political romance that reflects the growing dangers in our social divisions.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781648908095
Page Count: 395
Publisher: NineStar Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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 fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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