A simple but profound futuristic story of the painful effects of colonization.
Aliens find their quiet lives thrown into turmoil when humans explore their planet in Bailey’s SF debut.
Kelvoo is a member of a peaceful, genderless species on the planet Kuw’baal. The kloormari’s intricate bodies—a mushroomlike eye at the top and double-jointed limbs with paddles for hands—make them expert multitaskers. As such, they don’t rely on modern technology and are shocked when humans from planet Terra (aka Earth) send a surveillance drone to their planet. Next, humans come in an even bigger ship, and although Kelvoo and other kloormari find the visitors “hideous,” they aren’t threatening. They teach the kloormari all about the Terran language (of which there seems to be only one), food, culture, and unfamiliar concepts, such as imagination and fictional stories. Sadly, a later group of humans isn’t as amiable; they trick nine kloormari, including Kelvoo, into joining a phony mission, enslave them, and show them some of the worst that humanity has to offer. Kelvoo and the others, pushed to the brink, find a way to escape their plight so they can get home. But will Kuw’baal be the same place they left behind? Aside from the preface, the entire narrative is made up of Kelvoo’s autobiographical account, featuring straightforward observations in simple, unadorned prose. Kelvoo’s willingness to accommodate Terrans’ unusual customs makes the protagonist endearing, and there are some lighthearted moments, as when kloormari become fascinated by Terran-provided Infotab tablets. The kloormari, who live up to a few centuries and birth offspring in just weeks, prove fascinating in their own right. Bailey’s message is blunt but affecting, as the humans cheat, rebuke, and subjugate a species that they don’t bother to understand, and readers will find it painful to watch the kloormari suffer such cruelty. However, the author also rounds out his novel with delightful details, including hints of other species who are part of a Planetary Alliance.
A simple but profound futuristic story of the painful effects of colonization.Pub Date: May 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77810-241-7
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Philcora Enterprises Inc.
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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