A breathless, high-tech thriller that entertainingly goes through some familiar paces.
In Hale’s SF thriller, a ragtag band of gunrunners find themselves at the center of an unexpected crisis.
The planet Nera’s human population is mostly concentrated in enormous cities spiked with massive towers of technologically advanced, “smart” buildings; it’s been 300 years since nanotechnology saved the planet’s inhabitants from ecological devastation. As the narrative opens in the sprawling Serana Metro, an operative is carrying “some fate of the world thing” on a mission for the most wanted man on Nera, Dietrich Boateng. That “fate of the world thing,” a physical document, is crucial to the liberation of humanity from the all-powerful corporations (and the Triumvirate, the planet’s all-encompassing religion), and it’s also at the heart of a case being worked by Deputy Marshal Akira Sudo, who’s stumbled across a weird substance at one of her crime scenes and is determined to investigate it even though she's been warned that people who ask too many questions have “either been relieved of their duties or their heads.” Hale keeps the pace of his story at a high pitch throughout the narrative, deftly shifting from high-concept tech descriptions to thrilling action sequences. His large cast of characters has its fair share of stock stereotypes pulled from movies; Akira’s boss predictably yells at her, “Look, you’re a damn good cop, maybe one of the best to ever do it, but you’re also the most stubborn, insubordinate human being I’ve ever met”—and, of course, he throws in for good measure that if she keeps pushing things, she might lose her badge. Clichéd material like this is genuinely groanworthy, but Hale keeps the ideas and explosions coming at such a well-orchestrated clip—all moving toward a hugely satisfying climax that brings all of his plot threads together—that readers will be willing to overlook some tired tropes.
A breathless, high-tech thriller that entertainingly goes through some familiar paces.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9798987286500
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Indie Roots Media
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2023
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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