A messy, visionary debut.
The lives of two estranged siblings—one a detective in the Robot Crimes Unit and the other a world-class robot programmer—collide when a robot goes missing in a unified Korea.
Jun, the cop, is a veteran of the “so-called Bloodless War” that united North and South. He’s also trans, and a recovering virtual-reality addict. His younger sister, Morgan, is a lonely corporate pawn gunning for her shine at Imagine Friends, the Apple of a thriving neurobiology industry. Both struggle with the burden of their father’s pioneering career in technology along with tremendous grief for Yoyo, the robot brother he introduced into their family when they were children and then took away without explanation. It turns out that Yoyo lives, unbeknownst to his first family, in a nearby junkyard, where a young girl named Ruijie finds him and recognizes how special he is even in a world now replete with robots. Both Jun and Ruijie are disabled, from war injuries and illness respectively, and use robowear, a bionic existence which offers them added kinship with these new members of society. The speculative world Park creates feels remarkably robust: The robot revolution mirrors the way smartphones fundamentally altered modern life in less than a decade and the post-war landscape erupts with familiar tensions around immigrants, refugees, class, civility, violence, and security. There are some problems: The story suffers from an unnecessary withholding of information early on, as well as an overwhelming number of complications. Worldbuilding is one thing—and this world is indeed extraordinarily imagined—but the narrative bulges with tedious scenes and dialogue, questionable structural choices, and too many characters with little import. Still, the second half more than makes up for the misses of the first. Stay with this one for the big philosophical questions it asks about the nature of God, souls, humanity, politics, power, purpose, consciousness, memory, death, and, of course, love. Park is nothing if not ambitious, and the sheer scope of the endeavor is the reward. While stylish, the single word title doesn’t do the breadth of the novel justice.
A messy, visionary debut.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781668021668
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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