A sexy series shakes things up in its eighth installment.
A human woman who feels like an outsider finds love with an exiled alien.
Maddie and her sister, Lila, were kidnapped from Earth and crash-landed on an ice planet. Lila is deaf, and Maddie has spent most of her life in the role of Lila’s protector. But now Lila is happily mated with a baby on the way, and Maddie is struggling to forge her own identity separate from her sister. Maddie is the last unmated human woman on the ice planet. She’s convinced it’s because she’s temperamental and difficult, and she feels a lot of self-loathing about her body, which she thinks is “fat” compared to the other women. Bored and lonely, Maddie decides to teach herself to hunt. Impressed by her strength and determination, Hassen, one of the clan’s hunters, offers to teach her hunting and trapping skills. She’s curious about Hassen, who is alone, having lost his entire family when a sickness swept through his clan. In Barbarian’s Touch (2024), the previous book in the series, Hassen kidnapped Lila, hoping to find a mate. As punishment, he has been outcast, but he continues to hunt on behalf of the clan, hoping to show that he’s worthy of being readmitted. He regrets that his loneliness and longing for a family prompted him to take such a rash action. Maddie is intrigued by Hassen, recognizing a fellow outcast when she sees one. She offers a friends-with-benefits arrangement, and the two enter into a passionate affair. Hassen hopes Maddie will eventually consider him as a permanent mate. Dixon shows how her characters’ arcs mirror each other, with both longing for acceptance and belonging. Maddie realizes her strengths add value to the tribe, while Hassen longs to be forgiven for his selfish kidnapping. There is very little conflict between the two, as the difficulties of actual survival on an ice planet trump minor emotional conflicts. When a huge earthquake throws the entire society into crisis, Maddie and Hassen prove their worth by going to extraordinary lengths to save the others.
A sexy series shakes things up in its eighth installment.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780593639481
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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
This time-travel romance doesn’t live up to its intriguing setting.
While in Japan to learn more about her family history, a young Scottish woman is transported 128 years into the past, finding herself on the brink of the Satsuma Rebellion.
Born and raised in Scotland, Isla MacKenzie has traveled to Japan to learn more about the Japanese branch of her mother’s family. She hopes to discover whether family lore is true and she’s descended from a warrior who served alongside legendary rebel samurai leader Takamori Saigō. When a strangely out-of-season typhoon hits the town of Kagoshima, where she’s staying, Isla gets caught in the blinding rain and wind; she stumbles across a white torii gate, but as she approaches, hoping to find shelter, things begin to feel weird. As the storm subsides and Isla looks around, her surroundings seem foreign—Kagoshima’s busy streets and cafes have been replaced by woodlands. When a woman sees Isla and screams, claiming to have discovered a demon in the forest, samurai Maeda Keiichirō is one of the first to answer the call. He’s the voice of reason, recognizing Isla as a young woman, not a demon, even if she looks bizarre. As Isla figures out that she’s been transported back in time, she comes to realize she’s on the cusp of the deadly Satsuma Rebellion, which lasted nine months and ended in the death of its leader, Saigō. While she adjusts to life in the 19th century and searches for a way to make it back to the 21st, she grows closer to Keiichirō, her de facto protector. Like the protagonists of many time-travel romances, Isla struggles with the lack of modern comforts and with growing close to a man she may have to abandon. Also, of course, she knows how the rebellion ends, and is conflicted about using her knowledge to potentially change the course of history. There are the bones of an interesting romance here, especially given the fascinating time period. Unfortunately, the writing feels unpolished: Nine months doesn’t seem like enough time for our leads to make a meaningful connection, but also, not much happens in that timespan. Balancing historical context with a romance that possesses both cultural differences and an impending deadline is a tall order, and Kuroki doesn’t quite manage it.
This time-travel romance doesn’t live up to its intriguing setting.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063410879
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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