Clumsy in parts but, overall, a lot of fun.
Kidnapped astronauts find themselves in a mysterious city on one of Jupiter's moons.
Sociologist Nalini Jackson landed a gig that many of her colleagues would envy: She's undertaking “an intensive field study of social dynamics” on a NASA cryoship orbiting Jupiter. The problem, she soon realizes, is that she doesn’t like people all that much, especially most of the overgrown frat-boy types who are her shipmates. Things get worse when their ship is suddenly taken by mysterious forces to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, and they find themselves in New Roanoke, “an American city of at least a million. On a freaking moon, 444 million miles away, for chrissakes. In a bubble. City streets. Expressways. Parks.” They’re made to attend an orientation, where a supervisor tells them, “You can either let it drive you crazy for the rest of your life—and it can—or you can just go with the flow and make the most of this. Do like the locals do: Accept it and live your life. You got no choice; this is your home now.” The ship’s mission leader, Bob Seaford, takes this advice and gets involved in the community’s ruling party, while Nalini’s friend Dwayne Causwell goes the other way, plotting to escape the city with a ragtag group of dissidents. Meanwhile, a crew consisting of a NASA admiral, a businessman, and his dopey assistant embark on a voyage to rescue the kidnapped astronauts, who find themselves dealing with “invisible things,” mysterious gravitational forces that the people of New Roanoke refuse to discuss. There’s a lot going on in this book, and the results are mixed. As a satire of American politics and class issues, it’s a little too obvious and clumsy. But as a science-fiction novel, it’s saved by Johnson’s charismatic writing and sense of humor. (“So we missed sentient life—so what?” Nalini tells Dwayne early in the book. “Have you ever met sentient life? A lot of them are assholes.”) The book doesn’t quite live up to its high ambitions, and it’s far from Johnson’s best work, but it’s still unquestionably entertaining.
Clumsy in parts but, overall, a lot of fun.Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-22925-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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