A twisty, timey-wimey roller coaster that morphs seamlessly from treasure hunt to conspiracy thriller to escape room.
The creator of the absorbing podcast Rabbits expands its mythology about an ancient and potentially deadly game.
Debut novelist Miles is known for creating hit podcasts, and while this peculiar augmentation doesn’t quite stick the landing, its premise is spellbinding. Its namesake podcast is a missing persons mystery, but this sidequel digs far deeper into the mysteries surrounding the clandestine alternative-reality game at its heart. The narrator identifies himself only as K, and he’s fascinated by any threads of information about the unnamed game, known to players colloquially as “Rabbits.” Egged on by a video-arcade owner named the Magician, K, his girlfriend, Chloe, and pal Baron search out more information about the game as things get more dangerous for all of them. There’s not much to go on: The first recorded modern instance of the game emerged in 1959; a fractured recording lays out a few more clues, and readers learn more from interstitial notes by Hazel, the winner of the eighth iteration. Things start getting serious when K is approached in the arcade by the alleged winner of the sixth game, Alan Scarpio, “a gazillionaire playboy who hangs out with Johnny Depp,” who nonchalantly says, “Something is wrong with Rabbits, and I need you to help me fix it.” It’s believed that the game’s 10th iteration has ended, and a new round seems to be beginning when players solve a series of obscure riddles, followed by a cryptic pronunciation: “The door is open.” While not as pop-culture inundated as Ready Player One, the book nods to eccentric influences like the urban legend Polybius, about a mind-altering arcade game; the novels Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski; and, most tellingly, the cult movie Donnie Darko: “The Venn diagram of people interested in Rabbits and in Richard Kelly’s sci-fi thriller from 2001 is essentially just a circle.”
A twisty, timey-wimey roller coaster that morphs seamlessly from treasure hunt to conspiracy thriller to escape room.Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984819-65-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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
A frighteningly good debut.
Mysterious guests overstay their welcome in this fresh take on the haunted house trope.
Eve Palmer makes the biggest mistake of her life when there’s a knock on the door from a man who says he grew up in her house. Against her better instincts she invites him and his family inside, but a 15-minute look around turns into a world of trouble when she can’t get them to leave. First the Faust family’s young daughter disappears in the basement; then a storm hits and the roads are blocked, giving them no choice but to spend the night. Soon rooms appear altered, strange odors waft through the house, and a toy chimp from Eve’s childhood seems to be sending her a warning: "Once they’re in, they never leave." Kliewer’s original and extremely scary story gathers elements inspired by authors like Shirley Jackson and classic horror films including Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He’s created a can’t-look-away imaginary world in which people and places aren’t what they appear. Readers will be as shaken as Eve, who fears she’s suffering from delusions when an apparition warns her that the Fausts—and even her partner, Charlie—aren’t who they say they are. Inserted between the book’s chapters are "documents" that lay out evidence collected by conspiracy theorists who believe what’s happening to Eve has nothing to do with delusions. This alternate storyline, written in the style of Reddit—Kliewer’s novel grew out of a novella he posted there—feels jarring at times, as we’re reluctantly pulled away from Eve’s gripping tale. The conspiracy theorists’ creepy posts aren’t quite as hypnotic, but they solidify the plot’s premise and neatly tie up Eve’s predicament. Fans of the surging horror genre will think twice about opening the door when somebody knocks.
A frighteningly good debut.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781982198787
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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