A skillful and enjoyable blend of post-apocalyptic drama and soap opera.
A young detective seeks to find his place in a futuristic underground colony in Feltman’s SF novel, the second in a series.
Manny Stewart is a young NYPD detective living in the underground Colony of New York in 2364; a powerful hurricane, the product of climate change, destroyed New York City and forced 7,000 survivors to resettle in its subway system. Manny married Naztazya, his high-school sweetheart, and they have a young son, Zack. Manny’s relationship with his late father, Patrick, the former police chief, was complicated: Patrick had been an abusive, hardcore alcoholic. He also ran black-market trade with Philadelphia, making the Stewart family rich. Tragedy strikes Manny when Naztazya and their unborn second child are killed in a fire. His heroic actions taken during the blaze cause his professional career to flourish, both at the New York Police Department and in the political sphere. He starts drinking brandy to dull his pain, both emotional and physical, following a back injury (“He took another generous pull and then placed the flask back in his uniform pocket, so he didn’t forget to take it with him when he left for work”). Manny also makes a potentially catastrophic discovery with profound implications for the Colony. The author deserves kudos for her vivid conception of what a climate change–ravaged world might look like. In her Colony, humanity not only survives but thrives in a situation that feels both familiar and yet very different—life goes on as the populace clings to a willful ignorance concerning ecological devastation (Feltman is subtly preachy on this topic). Manny is an easy character to root for—he received a leg up thanks to his inherited wealth, but he doesn’t lord it over people. His character is also engagingly complex; he should have learned from the bad example of his father, but he still turns to liquor during difficult times. This is an engaging tale that is optimistic about the future despite a past full of avoidable suffering.
A skillful and enjoyable blend of post-apocalyptic drama and soap opera.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2024
ISBN: 9781737164227
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2023
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, 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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