A boldly political and boldly offensive sendup of America’s War on Terror and its aftermath.
A sexually frustrated Iraq War veteran grapples with past and present sins in Shallman’s satirical erotic thriller.
It’s 2003, and U.S. Navy Capt. Rod Solo loves being a fighter pilot. Flying his F/A 18F Super Hornet during the Iraq War is, for him, something close to sex. He’s also sexually intimate with his male co-pilot, Willy Green, while they’re stranded in the desert following a crash. After surviving capture, sexual torture, and even a bomb, Rod makes it back to America where (after a short fling with Edwina, the transgender sister of Willy, who’s missing in action), he embarks on a new career as a CIA drone pilot. Although a lack of arousal keeps him from having sex with his wife, Lulu, he has the opposite problem at work, where the grainy images of buildings and vehicles he targets leave him sweaty. His sexual desire carries over an in-person encounter with a co-worker, Mission Specialist Honey Bagwell—which, in turn, leads to the accidental bombing of a school in Pakistan. To atone for their horrific mistake, Rod and Honey are sent to Karachi disguised as DJs to kill the man they were supposed to eliminate: narco-terrorist Mohammed Rafiq. On-the-ground missions are a lot more dangerous than remote ones, and Rod realizes that the CIA may have decided he’s better off dead than alive. Over the course of this novel, Shallman offers high-octane prose that combines over-the-top prurience and nihilist political satire, as in a scene in which Rod takes a break at work: “As he pleasured himself, Rod imagined his penis was a joystick and his welling sperm ballistic missiles poised for launch from a gigantic turgid flesh drone hovering over Langley.” The book is certainly self-aware (at one point Shallman himself even makes an appearance) and the author’s use of hypersexuality to critique American imperial violence is certainly thought-provoking. Overall, though, the book isn’t as sexy, or even as funny, as it is discomfiting—and perhaps that’s the point that the author is trying to make.
A boldly political and boldly offensive sendup of America’s War on Terror and its aftermath.Pub Date: May 8, 2024
ISBN: 9798986354859
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Flying Bed Books
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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