Strong characterization propels this gripping botanical tale.
Shadowy provocateurs threaten a Parisian botanist growing medicinal apple trees in this literary thriller.
Polish American Andre Damazy joins a long, treacherous journey in Kazakhstan to find the Tengris. These obscure trees’ white apples have healing properties, which can benefit people around the world. Andre has a personal incentive as well—aiding his mother, who endured a stroke that’s physically weakened her. Though the search team’s haul is meager, it’s enough for Andre to produce Tengri trees in Paris, where he lives and works at a university. Andre’s sponsors, who funded the Tengri search, demand that he produce the trees quickly, as if he can somehow rush the saplings’ growth. But someone apparently opposes his mission, as an anonymous threat warns him not to “tinker with nature” and that “many eyes” are watching him. Andre keeps the Tengris relatively safe inside a locked greenhouse. But that doesn’t stop strangers from attempting sabotage, making ominous phone calls and breaking into his apartment to scare him off. As his paranoia increases, Andre resolves to figure out who’s after him—and why. As in Hugg’s last book, The Forgetting Flower (2019), this botanical tale fuels suspense. It’s an effective slow burn, as an unidentified menace gradually inches closer to Andre. This subtle approach carries over to the characters, too, including Andre’s romantic feelings for plant shopkeeper Renia Baranczka, the hero of the author’s preceding novel, who helps manage the Tengris. Moreover, this story’s protagonist struggles with torturous regret surrounding a years-old incident that ultimately comes to light. Hugg, a certified horticulturist, displays her knowledge and skills with vivid descriptions of plants and cultivation. But her prose shines throughout, as she establishes an unsettling tone merely detailing the environment: “The sidewalks were empty, the metal screens shut….Clusters of green recycling bins sat like hunched trolls on the curb.”
Strong characterization propels this gripping botanical tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Woodhall Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2021
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
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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