An inventive and action-packed, if sometimes uneven, SF finale.
This third installment of an SF trilogy focuses on a war between aliens and humans.
Raised as humans, four brothers—Joe, Franc, Paul, and Bart—received the shocking news that they were clones of an alien race and that this species was bent on humanity’s destruction. Called the Dark Ones, they are truly something to be feared. But it seems not all of them are evil. The brothers’ own father helped set up seven safe havens on Earth, though the siblings didn’t believe that all of the refuges would survive. Now, to everyone’s surprise and suspicion, a group appears in Sicily claiming to be from Denmark, one of the havens thought lost in a great battle. Joe is already wary of the band, but then he notices that one of the travelers bears a sign that he is a Dark One. It is Typhon, son of the Dark Ones’ leader and the very alien who was rumored to have destroyed the Denmark refuge. Typhon claims to have seen the error of his ways during the battle and turned against his own people to defend the haven: “It may be hard to believe, but I would fight to the death to protect you and your beliefs.” Joe cannot be sure that Typhon has turned over a new leaf, but bigger clashes are coming, and the entire planet is at stake. Humans will eventually need to prepare for a full-scale invasion. As this volume is the finale of Edge’s trilogy, it is highly recommended that readers peruse the first two novels to fully grasp the intriguing saga. The author does his best to catch readers up in the installment’s beginning, but the infodump will be overwhelming and exhausting for those unfamiliar with the series. This confusion is made worse by the fact that several characters are often talking in the same paragraph in the story. Readers may be baffled as to who is speaking, especially if they are not well acquainted with the large cast. Still, SF fans willing to put in the effort will be rewarded with innovative worldbuilding and an epic, high-stakes battle that delivers plenty of action and thrills. This is a gripping, wide-ranging tale that involves journal excerpts, faith, healing, monks, cloned wolves, uneasy alliances, and various aliens, weapons, and spaceships.
An inventive and action-packed, if sometimes uneven, SF finale.Pub Date: March 28, 2022
ISBN: 979-8421346050
Page Count: 493
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2022
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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