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THE ZYGAN EMPRISE

RENEGADES/REDEMPTION

An imaginative, enjoyable adventure for sci-fi fans.

A teenage girl becomes an intelligence agent on another planet after her brother goes missing.

When Shiloh Rush finds out that her brother John has gone missing only a month after enlisting in the military, she’s devastated. Months pass and still no word—things aren’t looking good. Then, after she finds she’s been transported to an unfamiliar world, the truth about her brother is revealed. John didn’t really enlist in the military: He was a catascope, an intelligence agent for the Zyngan Federation, an intergalactic empire only select people on Earth know about. (Earth, Shiloh is told, isn’t quite evolved enough to be let into the Federation’s elite ranks.) Shiloh decides to follow in his footsteps and train to be a catascope. After years of intense training, she and her partner, Spud, get entangled in trying to stop a plot by traitor Theodore Benedict that involves time-traveling back to the ancient Middle East, all while she and Spud try to lead double lives as teen TV stars back home. Later, Shiloh and Spud will also have the opportunity to potentially save her brother’s life, but doing so would mean altering the timeline of Earth’s history. Shiloh is a winning, compelling narrator, and it’s hard not to root for her and get caught up in her plight. The two action-packed, suspenseful books collected in this omnibus will likely appeal to readers familiar with the genre. However, those who only dabble in off-world sci fi may find themselves lost at sea, since the primary flaw in Pascal’s writing is the sheer volume of made-up terminology—“Mingferplatoi,” “Kharybdian,” “Zygint,” “M-fanning,” “Geryon”—which aside from sounding silly often makes the text fairly impenetrable. With such wild words popping up frequently, readers may find it difficult to lose themselves in the story or to get a real grasp on the narrative.

An imaginative, enjoyable adventure for sci-fi fans.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 9781463618629

Page Count: 528

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2014

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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

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IRON FLAME

From the Empyrean series , Vol. 2

Unrelenting, and not in a good way.

A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.

Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.

Unrelenting, and not in a good way.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023

ISBN: 9781649374172

Page Count: 640

Publisher: Red Tower

Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024

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