A smashing novel that delivers action, solid characterization, and plenty of metal.
In this SF sequel, an elite team’s search for an abducted teenager pits them against dangerous human traffickers.
By 2048, the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, and other factors have devastated the world. Although dystopian America lacks a central federal government, it does have a covert agency of technologically advanced personnel called CYBER (“Cybernetically-Enhanced Response Force”). Jack Mathews leads one of CYBER’s teams, who gear up for a mission to rescue Kelly Elverson, the teenage daughter of a man Jack knew back in his days as a pastor. It’s quickly apparent that human traffickers grabbed her, but the combat-trained and cybernetically altered team is ready and “wired” with hacking skills, increased speed, and super-strength. In a “fortress town” called Witch City (formerly Wichita, Kansas), CYBER plans to infiltrate a dangerous underworld and shut down the traffickers’ organization. However, their hunt for Kelly and other kidnapped teens ultimately sends Jack and his team right onto a megacorp’s home turf. This corporate conglomerate, like others of its kind, is as powerful as any government and dabbles in all sorts of nefarious deeds. Gizinski’s follow-up to The Metal Within (2016), despite its epic length of more than 600 pages, matches the brisk pace of its predecessor, as when CYBER, at various points, makes precarious deals with biker gangs, gets caught up in gunfights, and races to escape a high-rise. The large cast includes returning characters, new enemies, and potential new CYBER recruits. Throughout, the narrative gleefully shuffles through a range of character names, as some have codenames (like Jack’s “Preach” and his older handle “Greyscale”) and others have undercover aliases. Some players wind up in engrossing subplots—most notably CYBER member Josanne Sinclair, whose brother, James, may have a tie to the traffickers. The author’s crisp, concise prose ably steers clear of excessive violence and opts for such four-letter words as drek and popular genre expletive frak, known for its use in the Sci-Fi Channel show Battlestar Galactica. Gizinski teases another sequel, but this story’s denouement is a rewarding payoff.
A smashing novel that delivers action, solid characterization, and plenty of metal.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2023
ISBN: 9798987861394
Page Count: 678
Publisher: Polestar Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2023
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
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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