A grim but entertaining dystopian tale.
A biker gang rides across a desolate, precarious future world to get their hands on ancient gold in Wow’s SF debut.
Beamo Roamer is a “scavenge man” in Zarkaria, the former United States. Over a millennium ago, the apocalyptic “Doomtime,” which included a global plague, ravaged what is now referred to as “Merica” when speaking of the past. When biker gang member Beamo stumbles across a map to the old Merican base Area 51, where Fort Knox’s gold is allegedly stashed, he destroys it before rival bikers can get it. Gang leader Tee Sal enlists Beamo, his old friend, to guide his biker gang west; per the map, the scavenge man knows how to bypass Area 51’s tech-laden booby traps. The journey teems with dangers, including the notorious Mutant Angels, “sadistic freaks” who wear the skins of their victims. Other menaces are even more unpredictable, from “tech-goblins” to “geemo” (genetically modified) creatures. Beamo, Tee, and Little Bit, Tee’s half-sister (and Beamo’s romantic interest), undertake a treasure hunt that may very well get the gang killed. Wow’s dense backstory provides a rock-solid foundation for the story. Likewise, the cast already has history (Beamo and Tee did their mandatory militia service together). In fact, the story too often dwells on the past, as the bikers discuss topics they barely know anything about, such as bygone Merican days (“Back then, privileged kids went to schools called collegesuntil they turned twenty-two, a lot of times even went until they were a lot older”) and ancient religions. The author smartly keeps the characters moving westward; the gang runs across all sorts of trouble that they handle as efficiently as possible before Tee belts out his refrain, “We ride!” They face monsters of assorted sizes, supernatural beings, and evil humans, who tend to be the most deplorable of these foes. Beamo, who narrates, dubs this his memoir, but as it’s only a small part of his life; sequels/prequels are a definite possibility.
A grim but entertaining dystopian tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 233
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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