A cogent novel that points a glaring light at an unfair justice system.
A convict agrees to an experiment that instantly ages him—corresponding to his sentence—but returning to the life he knew proves a punishing task in this debut sci-fi-infused thriller.
Twentysomething carjacker Danny Fierro didn’t actually commit the murder that sent him to jail. But because the victim was a cop, the judge deems Danny as guilty as his partner in crime, killed in return fire. Devastated that his pregnant girlfriend, Sonya de Leon, writes him off after giving birth, Danny takes little solace in his public defender getting him a chance at parole, as it’s not for three decades. This, however, makes him a candidate for Premium Sentencing, a procedure that takes the same number of years away from prisoners that they have left to serve. Danny, then, is suddenly age 55, earning freedom, along with fellow “processees.” Unfortunately, Sonya doesn’t seem interested in starting a family with a much older Danny, who has trouble adjusting, enduring stomach pains and getting caught up with vicious pushers of a vitality-restoring drug. It’s worse for other processees, most of whom develop mental disorders or commit suicide. Conlan Laboratories, where it all began, is up to something dubious, which may entail further experiments with Danny—his willingness to participate merely incidental. Despite a plot steered by fantastical science, Takemoto wisely keeps it shrouded in mystery, not revealing Premium Sentencing’s origins until the end. The story adopts a searing examination of rehabilitation: the public, referring to Premium Sentencing by the blunter term Bio-Justice, treats processees as deserving of their psychological fallout, while some criminals retain their violent ways, even though they’re now quite a bit older. Most convicts, and especially Danny, garner sympathy as the tale progresses, aided by poignant descriptions: someone notes that the processees are “hollowed out, soulless—as if they were already dead.” The grounded narrative eases readers into the sci-fi-laden final act, which is rife with shocks and rigorously ties up subplots, including one obscure character’s suicide early in the tale.
A cogent novel that points a glaring light at an unfair justice system.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 257
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
