The beginning of what could be a riveting apocalyptic saga.
In the near future, 98 percent of the Earth’s population has been wiped out by a virus developed by the Chinese and inadvertently unleashed on the world. In the Pacific Northwest, one man, math professor Graham Morgan, finds the will to live.
Having lived through the nightmarish experience of watching his pregnant wife wither away and die, Morgan is now faced with the task of burying his beloved father. All alone in a world increasingly ruled by wild animals—and ruthless human predators—Morgan’s goal of making it to an old family cabin deep in the wilderness near a secluded lake is complicated when a woman leaves her 5-year-old son at his feet just before she dies. Morgan’s journey with the boy takes more than a few unexpected turns as they travel through the dangerous wasteland of what was once civilization. By the time they reach their destination, his group (which now includes 15-year-old twin girls whom Morgan courageously saved from the clutches of a madman) must come to grips with their new reality: Winter is coming, supplies are running out, and there may be a gang of killers living across the lake. Powered by adept character development and relentless pacing, this post-apocalyptic novel, the first in a series, doesn’t exactly have a particularly innovative storyline, yet the strength of characterization makes for a page-turning, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it reading experience. Still, some aspects of the novel could’ve been much stronger: The description of the post-apocalyptic world is largely superficial, the expected horrific imagery and overall dark ambiance noticeably absent. On a larger scale, there’s no real thematic profundity. Nevertheless, readers will find Morgan to be an endearing hero at world’s end.
The beginning of what could be a riveting apocalyptic saga.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1494368555
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
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
A new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
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