This semi-surreal, visionary, apocalyptic SF pilgrimage engages readers while keeping its secrets.
Two Michigan men revive from comas decades after a mysterious astronomical event altered the laws of nature and try to navigate the bizarre phenomena of a transformed, largely deserted North America.
In this sequel to Heasley’s debut SF novel, Under a Darkening Moon (2022), a bizarre cosmic disaster, the “moondark,” has overtaken the world. The time frame here is 27 years after some kind of celestial collision (or was it?) of an object with Earth’s moon spewed out a blanket of ejecta covering the planet. But it was no mere fall of moondust; the fundamental laws of nature and the universe were shaken. Now, near Detroit, two men, biologist Mort Sowinski and would-be hairstylist Todd Farkas, awaken from decades-long comas, covered in yolklike sacs (their own skins, actually) and not visibly aged. They explore a deserted landscape of ruins and strangeness, where long-extinct fauna, creatures of myth and legend, apparitions, and threatening yet oddly ineffectual, marauding humanoid robots may be encountered. A note left by Todd’s long-evacuated family directs the pair toward Rocky Mountain territory, and—via an advanced Navy anti-gravity vehicle—the duo heads west. Enigmas continue to pile up, with the men speculating that even their own inner psyches, subconscious dissatisfactions, and obsessions are somehow manifesting things in the material universe, perhaps dangerously so. Even when they encounter the organized remnants of humankind (a global population now reduced to a billion) in Colorado—the new seat of government—the protagonists still sense that elusive facts about the moondark are being deliberately withheld from them by the authorities. Perhaps with good reason.
Acquaintance with the first book is not absolutely necessary to enjoy this one, a rare quality in multivolume mind-benders. The sequel is reminiscent of such SF tales of altered cosmology and reality-turned-upside-down as Fred Hoyle’s October the First Is Too Late (1966) and Stephen King’s novella The Mist (1980) or, if readers really dare to go there, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The increasingly philosophical narrative teases readers with questions and hallucinatory developments, even at the risk of making them doubtful that there will be any solid answers to the plot’s conundrums. The author is a Roman Catholic priest, and while very little here may be called evangelical in the usual SF genre sense, religion receives praise as having perhaps a better grip on these things than science ever will. (But the dollops of science that Heasley drops in here and there, courtesy of doctorate-holding Mort, are impressive as well.) There are respectful portrayals of Crow tribal mysticism blended with a guest appearance by an African-born pope, a priest who is a computer programmer, an unspoken approximation of the Gaia hypothesis (that Earth has an overarching soul spirit and self-awareness), and even a mention of the “rapture,” albeit this one seems far from the right-wing Christian prophecies and polemics that typify the Left Behind franchise and its disciples. The engrossing tale ends with a fantastic Jules Verne–esque journey that leaves many riddles remaining to be answered. As Todd says at one point, “Definitely Dreamland.”
This semi-surreal, visionary, apocalyptic SF pilgrimage engages readers while keeping its secrets. (science fiction)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2023
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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