A girl comes of age as a warrior in a ruined world in this headlong thriller.
Post-apocalyptic Ireland is a chilling setting for this dystopian novel.
When something called the Emergency strikes Ireland, turning most of its human population into terrifying zombie-like creatures called skrake, 14-year-old Orpen is on her own after her two mothers die. She’s captured by a band of banshees, women who serve as warriors and guards for the few thousand humans left living in Phoenix City, a walled city adjacent to Dublin. Judged fit by Ash, the formidable banshee leader, Orpen becomes part of A-Troop, the squad that captured her, and is trained to fight and kill. The banshees are structured on the Spartan model, with bonded pairs of women who live and fight together. Orpen soon becomes attached emotionally to her partner, Agata, despite her mysterious absences. Orpen also learns about the strict social hierarchy of the city, with management (mostly male) at the top; farmers, breeders, and wallers, who work constantly to build and repair the thick, high walls that keep out the ravening skrake, next; and, at the bottom, the shunned dwellers in what’s called the shanties, formerly the Dublin Zoo. Banshees hold special status as enforcers, but most of the city’s scant resources are controlled by the leaders, who reinforce their power by holding occasional human sacrifices of rule-breakers. The novel’s worldbuilding is crisply efficient, with enough detail to create a sense of dread, especially in set pieces like a banshee foray into a long-abandoned airport to hunt for supplies. Orpen’s candid first-person narration lets the reader learn about her new world as she does, an isolated place without electricity or cars, factories or guns, and dwindling levels of literacy. The plot is fast-paced and suspenseful, and the banshees satisfyingly heroic.
A girl comes of age as a warrior in a ruined world in this headlong thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781250262622
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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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