Another intricately plotted, vividly sensual love story from a romance favorite.
With life-threatening injuries, Bowen Knight is spirited away to a lab deep in the ocean where he meets Kaia, a BlackSea changeling who considers him the enemy despite the disconcerting attraction they share.
Human Alliance security chief Bowen Knight is fighting for his life. Not only has he been shot through the heart, but he’s also facing a degrading brain implant that was originally developed to help humans block invasion from the Psy race but is now failing, becoming a life-threatening time bomb. Installed in a supersecret underwater medical research facility run by BlackSea, the oceanic changeling pack, he wakes after two months in a coma to learn he has healed from the gunshot wound thanks to a new robotic heart and that the BlackSea medical team has developed a possible treatment for the brain implant. Humans across the planet have these implants, so a successful treatment would be a huge relief. However, his chances of surviving the experiment are slim. That makes it a problematic time to meet Kaia, his BlackSea doctor’s cousin and the first woman who’s attracted him enough to consider a relationship. Kaia can’t deny she’s attracted to him too, but she’s also convinced that he's directly responsible for the disappearance of a number of members of the BlackSea clan, including her best friend, Hugo. Bo and his BlackSea security counterpart, Malachai Rhys, begin investigating the disappearances and realize Hugo has a few secrets of his own. Meanwhile, the bond between Kaia and Bo intensifies and they try to pack a lifetime of experiences into the limited time they have before Bo's treatment might fail, but when the chemical compound at the heart of the treatment is stolen, a whole other set of threats may come between them. Paranormal romance author Singh continues her Psy-Changeling Trinity series with her typically impeccable worldbuilding, and fans will enjoy the foray into the oceanic world of BlackSea. This installment captivates with its intensity and liveliness despite an oddly zigzagging final quarter.
Another intricately plotted, vividly sensual love story from a romance favorite.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-98782-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
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 charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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