A captivating literary blend of science and fantasy.
In Vincent’s novel, a geophysicist travels to a remote area of Vancouver Island that’s reputed to possess magical properties—and maybe a mysterious sea monster.
Travis Sivart is a tactical navigator and crew commander on the CP-140 Aurora, a maritime aircraft that tracks down submarines and conducts rescue missions; he’s also a trained geophysicist, but he’s deeply moved by the allure of the rationally inexplicable. He happens upon a newspaper called The The Segway News (with two Thes); apparently, copies are published weekly and scattered about the region, attached to red balloons. They detail the events of a little-known hinterland on Vancouver Island called The Segway, named after its most notable geographic feature: an underground conduit to the Pacific Ocean, likely created by a seismic event. His curiosity piqued, Travis investigates and learns that the area is reputed to be the home of a massive sea monster, so he sets out to find The Segway for himself. When he does, he’s greeted by Jub Tollerson, a man in a tuxedo who says he expected Travis’ arrival and offers a tour. Despite the forbidding terrain, Travis sees beautifully constructed buildings, stores, and a surfeit of provisions. He also finds delightfully eccentric residents, whom Vincent portrays with great artistry and humor. Clay Potter, for example, has lived in a nest for 40 years, and Flan Dwyer is writing a novel that’s already 25,000 pages long. The author deftly chronicles Travis’ exploration of The Segway—he aims to interview all 30 of its denizens—as well as his hunt for “Seggie,” the sea monster. The form of the novel is basically an empirical record of Travis’ research, and it provocatively highlights the limits of reason as Vincent intelligently ponders the real and surreal aspects of the strange town. At one point, the mayor of The Segway, known as Dr. Joy, tries to explain to Travis that “People do what they do, and sometimes there’s no explanation.” Readers will find themselves as engaged as the protagonist, and they’ll share his bewilderment with a sense of excitement and wonder.
A captivating literary blend of science and fantasy.Pub Date: July 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781039171503
Page Count: 283
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2023
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
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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