Though the hero defeats the family curse, the big story here is his struggle to maintain his own humanity.
An alien living on Earth endures a war waging between his alien and human selves while also investigating a family curse for an old friend.
Turned into a human in 1963 after his spaceship crashed in England, Ishmael Jones has always lived a life under the radar (Murder in the Dark, 2018, etc.). Until now, he’s been able to reconcile his alien and human selves, drawing on an impressive set of skills, like his powerful strength and ability to read people as well as some supervision from a shadowy group called the Organization, to help him solve crimes committed on the fringes of society. Though Ishmael doesn’t like to think about his nonhuman past, a look in the mirror one day tells him the alien within is threatening to resurface and destroy his humanity. He doesn’t know how to quell this turmoil, which wouldn’t bother him so much if his human side weren’t happily sharing a life with Penny Belcourt, a willing co-adventurer in life and the Organization’s missions. While Ishmael ponders whether to tell Penny about his potentially dwindling humanity, his friend and former colleague Robert Bergin reaches out to Ishmael to seek out his specific skill set for some unusual assistance. Though Robert hasn’t seen Ishmael in 30 years, Ishmael hasn’t aged a day, and while Robert doesn’t know the truth, Ishmael’s lack of aging persuades Robert that Ishmael may be exactly who he needs to help him. Robert’s betrothed daughter, Gillian, hopes to avoid the family curse of the death of every man who married a Bergin woman on their wedding night. Ishmael and Penny are skeptical about the supernatural forces causing the deaths, but when the pastor who’s been engaged to perform the ceremony is murdered, they agree to investigate.
Though the hero defeats the family curse, the big story here is his struggle to maintain his own humanity.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8886-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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