An entertaining read for those who enjoy sprawling spacefaring series.
Six comic books combined into one action-packed SF story that’s full of complex political intrigue.
Writers Hodapp and Viola and artist Matsuya place readers into the thick of things from the first page with an attempted political assassination on an alien world. Sinfed Reyu, an imposing, armored alien being, manages to save the targeted representative, but is notified by his contractor about another assassination attempt carried out elsewhere by infamous assassin Krishah. Reyu is a mercenary and the last of his kind; he’d been trapped in a device called a transpod for millennia. He believes that Krishah, who works for a fringe religious terrorist group called the Ascended, may have information on what happened to his people, the Ja’din, and where their lost relics are. However, Krishah won't be turning herself in to authorities anytime soon; after failing to successfully kill an ambassador, she decides to eliminate Reyu. To muddle matters further, their standoff is interrupted by another merc-for-hire, Vella Janx, who kidnaps them for a mysterious client. Janx, along with his droid companion, 9Bot, also pick up with Tor Gret, who helps to conceal military deserter Jaxon Sutton from pursuers; and bodyguard Annill. Will they be able to carry out their client’s cataclysmic wishes without succumbing to infighting? Matsuya’s detailed, full-color illustrations skillfully bring the dynamic, alien fictional world of this series to life, rendering SF backgrounds and non-humanoid characters in expressive ways. Hodapp and Viola’s storylines vary in quality as they juggle a large cast of characters, but some of the players share intriguing similarities. Reyu and Annill, for example, are both the last of their species, due to memory-wiping time travel and an infection contagious enough to wipe out an entire planet; Krishah, who was orphaned at a young age, also knows nothing of her own past. Overall, this is a fast-paced read that will leave readers curious about what’s next in store for the cast.
An entertaining read for those who enjoy sprawling spacefaring series.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9798989206322
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 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
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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