A fascinating, compulsively readable clash of hardware and ideals.
New stand-alone science fiction yarn from the author of such behemoths as The Naked God (2000), etc., whose shimmering skeins encompass colonial oppression, the military-industrial complex, alien empires, time travel, genetic manipulation, nanomachines, and what-all. Several centuries hence, with interstellar trade prohibitively expensive, Earth remains overpopulated and poverty-stricken. Predatory corporations like Zantiu-Braun have developed a policy of “asset realization,” sending starships full of troops to strip hapless colony worlds of everything they produce. Next on Zantiu-Braun’s hit list is planet Thallspring. This time, though, experienced trooper Lawrence Newton has private plans. On a previous visit to the planet, he stumbled upon a tantalizing and valuable secret, and now he's determined to grab it and escape his oppressive employers for good. At first he and his fellow troopers—they wear “Skins,” strength-amplifying muscle suits with built-in armor and powerful weaponry—easily dominate the locals, as Simon Roderick, Zantiu-Braun’s multiple-clone head of security, takes hostages to ensure their cooperation. But soon a more organized and effective opposition emerges, and the troopers face bloody street battles and civilian trickery. Storytelling schoolmarm Denise Ebourn and a handful of colleagues are the true resistance: they carry Primes, miniaturized Artificial Sentiences far more powerful than Zantiu-Braun’s, and possess other highly advanced mental and physical adaptations whose “nanonic” source derives from the mysterious “dragon.” Newton's goal is to learn Denise’s secrets. Roderick, as soon as he learns of the dragon, demands the secrets too, for different reasons. Denise has her own basis for denying them both. And, Denise wonders, how and why does Newton also carry a Prime?
A fascinating, compulsively readable clash of hardware and ideals.Pub Date: March 11, 2002
ISBN: 0-446-52708-4
Page Count: 640
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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