Complicated cause-and-effect shenanigans put a fresh spring in the step of time-travel SF.
After a surprisingly accessible time-travel method is discovered, agents of the Time Management Agency try to thwart a conspiracy of meddlers who get their thrills from changing human history.
Author Unwin, trained as a theoretical physicist, offers a sequel to his time-travel antic One Second Per Second (2021). In an increasingly rare virtue for this type of SF, close familiarity with the first novel is not absolutely necessary to follow its tale of a semisecret government facility called the Time Management Agency. Back in the 20th century, generating faster-than-light tachyon particles—resulting in time travel— was achieved via chemical means, not vast supercolliders. Now a subculture of miscreants (similar to anarchist computer hackers) know the secret and proceed to vandalize the eons, breaking Lee Harvey Oswald’s trigger finger, thwarting John Lennon’s murder, and generally delivering wish-fulfillment vigilante space/time justice. They rationalize that any historical damage is automatically sorted out by a morally indifferent universe (once a monstrous dictator called von Hayek was erased, an upstart named Hitler merely took his place). That’s not good enough for the TMA, who try to fix tachyon irregularities, both natural and human-made. Top time cop Joad Bevan has undercover agents and contacts within the ranks of the “Allfours,” the time renegades, including his own son, Dart. Their chief concern: a rogue mastermind with intimate TMA ties is organizing his devoted followers to perpetrate “the Big One,” a truly fiendish alteration to known events. What is the Big One? And what are the ramifications? Unwin's Vonnegut-type sense of humor about the essential absurdity of the situation yields some murky intrigues, double crosses, traps, and betrayals leapfrogging across the ages. The skulduggery reaches a crescendo with dire jeopardy, deaths, and a few prehistoric monsters. Dizzying plot twists centering on secret-identity subterfuges resemble something out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta but are potentially more confusing. A few diagrams might have helped readers understand the action. This novel may appeal most to those who’ve enjoyed fictional time-tripping with intricate cult favorites like Barrington J. Bayley’s The Fall of Chronopolis.
Complicated cause-and-effect shenanigans put a fresh spring in the step of time-travel SF.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-8195-3607-0
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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