A well-written, fiery sci-fi tale about human warriors battling an alien regime.
A ragtag but determined army of exiled human soldiers faces strategic and moral dilemmas while trying to wrest a conquered Earth from an alien empire.
In this sci-fi debut, humanity’s successful technological leap into becoming a space-going culture has brought calamity to the planet. First, contact with nomadic aliens called the Ahai, willing to share “wormhole” technology, triggered the ruinous “Corporate War” launched by human mega-capitalists trying to protect their interests. Then came the threat that placed the Ahai into perpetual drifting exile: a warrior species with insect and reptilian aspects called the Hetarek, who wiped out upward of 90 percent of humanity and turned Earth into a (fairly minor) mining colony in their empire. It is now over 20 years after the subjugation, and the remaining humans toil as slave labor, administrated by long-captured Ahai who are the Hetareks’ puppets plus designated human go-betweens who have mastered the Hetarek language. (Traitorous though they seem, some of these quislings try to avoid unnecessary bloodshed by the occupiers.) An eager force of humans with military training who fled with the accommodating Ahai is rearming and starting to retake old possessions. An elite away team infiltrates the Pacific Northwest to foment resistance and rebellion. But among a generation of humans (and Ahai) who have known nothing but the Hetarek jackboot (or, more accurately, foot claw), the would-be liberators find themselves facing unexpected distrust and treachery. In this series opener, characterizations tend to be pushed to the margins by the intrigue, action, and military jargon–laden dialogue. But Thomas has thought through the mindsets of victors and vanquished, skillfully shading in the psychologies of the opposing forces before small feints and ambushes bloom into full-scale war. The semi-open ending leaves the tale, which at times recalls L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth, open to many further possibilities (most of them promising dire mayhem). Readers may discern in the story’s three-way species conflict parallels to real-life invasions and occupations (quagmires in the Middle East come to mind). But if a metaphor is at work here, it doesn’t overshadow the essential heroics.
A well-written, fiery sci-fi tale about human warriors battling an alien regime.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 521
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
