A bleak, engrossing tale about diversity and acceptance in a tyrannical future world.
In this dystopian novella, people who don’t fit so-called gender norms are forced to undergo brutal conditioning treatments.
It’s not easy for Black, nonbinary Ash Smith and white, gay trans male Aubrey Tennyson to find employment. The two, who meet at a job fair in an oppressive Midwest confederation in what was once America, diverge from the heterosexual, gender binary society. A recruiter steers the new friends to Hightower, a center that promises to connect them with potential employers. Hightower helps overlooked “people work within the system to find themselves a livelihood and security.” But Ash and Aubrey quickly learn that something is horribly wrong there when they and a small group of others like them wind up trapped in Hightower. The center splits them into male and female groups for “correction”—Aubrey, for example, endures “femininity training.” These sessions entail shocks from a cattle prod or medical device while strapped to a chair. As these vicious acts only escalate in savagery, Ash, Aubrey, and their fellow captives, with some unexpected help, look for a way to escape the tightly locked Hightower and its array of armed guards. The cast of Cooper and Wunn’s novella is superbly diverse. Along with the two leads, there’s pansexual Julia and self-proclaimed “old lesbian” Helen as well as men who don’t abide by the “masculine archetypes” (for example, they aren’t outdoorsy). This timely, relevant plot aptly depicts the harmful effects of a society’s restrictions, as conforming can mean people sadly transforming themselves, from their dress and general demeanors to who they choose to be with. This all unfolds in an increasingly violent and bloody narrative, precipitating scenes that may churn stomachs. At the same time, there aren’t many surprises, especially as readers will anticipate the titular massacre and know who will likely survive it. The final act nevertheless provides a closer look at the dystopian world Ash and Aubrey live in, although this absorbing story stays smartly focused on the harrowing experiences inside Hightower.
A bleak, engrossing tale about diversity and acceptance in a tyrannical future world.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 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
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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