A wild galactic series entry that successfully remains grounded in heartfelt emotion.
The latest installment of Hickman’s space opera finds the teenage title character facing some big life challenges—not the least of which involves saving the galaxy.
Richard, an Ohio teen who was plucked off Earth by aliens and put in charge of the entire Milky Way, has a lot on his plate. After narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, he’s now tasked with quelling escalating tensions between humans and nonhumans all over the star system. He’s also contending with an extended family of anthropomorphic foxes and their intra-pack politics on the planet Beowulf. Amber, who’s one of those foxes and Richard’s wife, admonishes him for tossing out Earth colloquialisms. Richard’s son with Amber, Little Raider, is having a hard time trying to prove his mettle by chasing down prey in the woods with his Uncle Raider, only to realize he’s too squeamish to do what’s expected. Attempting to flee his shame, Little Raider falls in with assassin foxes whom Richard thinks would make great additions to the military forces on his adopted home world of Krel. Meanwhile, Sen. Spartacus and his five-times-great-grandmother continue their villainous quest to kill or kidnap Richard and his loved ones. Heads roll, constantly—Beowulf foxes carry sharp swords. Meanwhile, Richard and Amber possess magical blue energy and can heal loads of trauma, although their powers are supposed to be secret. Thankfully, AAL, a Merlin-like figure overseeing Richard’s escapades, is around to help. Hickman delivers another oddly way-out adventure in his ongoing series. In addition to the aforementioned severed heads, the book also has a good dose of what, depending on the reader, may or may not be an excessive preoccupation with how the space foxes approach procreation. Still, all the sex and violence belies the true beating heart of Hickman’s latest series installment. In the end, it’s not the sweeping swordplay or blaster quick-draws that power the proceedings to this volume’s surprising conclusion, but rather the deep and potent love Richard and his interspecies family continue to have for one another, no matter what comes their way.
A wild galactic series entry that successfully remains grounded in heartfelt emotion.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 448
Publisher: RedFoxOnHigh
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2024
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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