A vision quest–like eco-fantasy musing on the anguished conditions of modern Earth.
Earth is on the verge of being judged unworthy and devoured by alien entities in Tembruell’s SF thriller, the first in a series.
In a hell-world in the center of outer-space’s Dark Matter realm abide the Inani, batlike humanoids who inspired the infamous real-life West Virginia cryptid “Mothman.” They devour unpromising or nonessential planets to sustain themselves; Earth is on the menu, doomed by its detrimental, self-destructive apex species, the greedy and violent Homo sapiens. Earth actually had potential, as evidenced by the nature-centered culture and cosmology of North America’s Indigenous peoples, but they were extirpated by European invaders who were armed with bigotry, firepower, and religious fervor. Present-day humanity (manipulated by secret agents of Chaos) suffers under climate change and political discord. In midst of natural disasters and fascist militias, the state of Texas secedes to be become the brutal Lone Star Nation. (However, it still contains champions and “elementals” on Earth Mother’s side.) Arden McBride is a traumatized veteran of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. Now a born-again “Druid,” he serves as mystic protector of a handful of nature-loving Austin-based pagans running from conservative gun-nut death squads. Other heroes include Komkom “Kwin” Akwini, a talking tree (the mighty Kwin?), and STEM, an elemental spirit who became entangled in a new manmade “innerverse” (the internet) and struggles to comprehend a Donald Trump-era miasma of digital disinformation and hostility. But what of the Mothman? See next installment. This book is very much a stage-setting opener, drawing from the same author-illustrator’s earlier linked short-story compendium, Stories, Legends and Truths From the Blighted Earth (2023). A veritable cornucopia of anthropological musings and introspection accompanies the slight storyline, which is rich in abstruse language and word invention (“Chaos’s En’Troop-EE had invaded the Web with an ingeniously conceived and well-executed insurgency of hate, infiltrating all exchanged processes”) and short on positive things to say about Western civilization. Timely references to 21st-century pathologies distinguish the story from artifacts of the literary era when Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan did or didn’t walk the Earth.
A vision quest–like eco-fantasy musing on the anguished conditions of modern Earth.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798891323599
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.
The fourth and final volume in the Terra Ignota series, a science fantasy set on a 25th-century Earth where people affiliate by philosophy and interest instead of geography.
For the first time in centuries, the world is seized by war—once the combatants actually figure out how to fight one. While rivalries among the Hives provide several motives for conflict, primary among them is whether J.E.D.D. Mason, the heir to various political powers and apparently a god from another universe in human form, should assume absolute rule over the world and transform it for the better. Gathering any large group to further the progress of the war or the possibility for peace is hampered by the loss of the world transit system of flying cars and the global communications network, both shut down by parties unknown, indicating a hidden and dangerous faction manipulating the situation for its own ends. As events play out, they bear a strong resemblance to aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey, suggesting the persistent influence of Bridger, a deceased child who was also probably a god. Is tragedy inevitable, or can the characters defy their apparent fates? This often intriguing but decidedly peculiar chimera of a story seems to have been a philosophical experiment, but it’s difficult to determine just what was being tested. The worldbuilding—part science, part magic—doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny, and the political structure defies comprehension. The global government consists of an oligarchy of people deeply and intimately connected by love and hate on a scale which surpasses the royal dynasties of old, and it includes convicted felons among their number. Perhaps the characters are intended as an outsized satiric comment on the way politicians embrace expediency over morality or personal feelings, but these supposedly morally advanced potentates commit so many perverse atrocities against one another it is difficult to engage with them as people. At times, they seem nearly as alien as J.E.D.D. Mason.
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7806-4
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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