An ambitious, disquieting and majestic debut.
In Rickert’s debut novel, a composer’s ability to nearly reproduce the sounds of “Astral Music” brings him in contact with a bizarre group of musicians.
During this novel’s “Overture,” a “fist-sized mass the purplish color of a newborn baby emerge[s] from [an] instrument’s bowels.” Not all the text that follows is as consistently gruesome, but that event is a harbinger of terrors to come. Readers who prefer not to suspend their disbelief, beware; others, prepare for a fantastic, twisted update on Southern Gothic horror. Its would-be hero is San Diego composer Cameron Blake, whose musical talents are being squandered scoring bad television shows when he receives a visitor with “eyes that sparkled like chips of blue ice”: Leonin Bloom, the conductor of a chamber orchestra in Holloway, Tennessee. Bloom explains that Cameron isn’t the only person who has heard “music from the Other Side” (which the composer experienced after a childhood car accident), but he is the one who’s come closest to replicating it. Intrigued, Cameron follows Bloom to Tennessee, where he meets an orchestra of preternaturally old, rancid-smelling musicians and encounters Bloom’s collection of grotesquely shaped musical instruments, with features such as skulls and “demon-faced scrolls.” As Cameron’s compositional work gets underway—with the aid of a special tuning fork that lets the musicians attain inner harmony—he also meets several residents of Holloway, including Simon, an immense, extremely talented violinist with no ears; Hob, a janitor who believes his dead wife is communicating with him; and Madison, a beautiful shop owner with whom Cameron instantly connects. The overall atmosphere of Rickert’s novel is impressive, as is its often shocking plot. The author’s skill is most evident in his depiction of his characters, who seem instantly recognizable, even in brief appearances. As a result, their uneasy fates may disappoint some readers. (One horrendous assault early in the novel is unshakably discomforting.) When events take on epic, heaven-and-hell proportions, none of the characters is safe—but that same sense of consequence also results in an excellent work.
An ambitious, disquieting and majestic debut.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1939371423
Page Count: 438
Publisher: Boutique of Quality Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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