A Christian-leaning science thriller that stays on the mild side until it produces a sudden sting.
A woman once deliberately inflicted with transplanted memories by a treacherous researcher faces high-tech bodily possession by a dead man.
The Goddards (Living Memories, 2013), husband-and-wife authors, here birth a sequel to their debut borderline-sci-fi novel, with intrigue and nastiness above and beyond the call of science at the University of Mississippi. Heather McHann was once cruelly turned into a human “guinea pig” by her now-dead boyfriend, Gregory “Dex” Poindexter, a college researcher using cutting-edge computer techniques. He unethically manipulated human subjects in treating trauma and PTSD by transferring memories from one person to another. The method led to “infective” mind control and crimes committed by the helpless Heather at Dex’s behest. Three years later, despite her negative past experiences, personal trainer Heather is fascinated with the science and starts working part time in the Sleep and Memory Unit at Ole Miss. She re-encounters previous subjects of Dex’s malice—chiefly troubled teenager Samantha Mathis. But Heather also gets accosted and threatened by a suspiciously tweedy assailant in corporate shakedowns aimed at her and Samantha by big pharma, which is prodding into Dex’s potentially profitable secrets. But there’s more. Heather discovers a data device left by Dex in anticipation of his demise with a video file labeled “entire essence.” Displaying the poor sense exhibited by teens in those slasher movies who go wandering into dark places alone, she views the encoded images, setting the stage for a twist on the theme of spiritual possession. The Ole Miss campus turns out to be an atypical and refreshing locale for genre fiction. The authors infuse their thriller with a discernible Christian worldview, though it is less preachy than readers might expect. Characters argue about evidence for the existence of souls, say grace before meals, and seldom spout anything that goes beyond mild profanity. Sexual suggestiveness stays PG, if even that (no kinky stuff for a premise based on a bad guy reviving in a 29-year-old beauty’s gym-toned body). Samantha keeps having encounters with “Benji,” a sort of holy fool nobody else seems able to perceive, who quotes Bible references and warns against evil in a Yoda/Gollum/Clarence the angel manner. Science and technology speculation might have been served in the heady doses that bestselling novelist Michael Crichton generated in his books, but the authors pull away from that. (And they are notably ahead of Crichton in the characterizations, with the exception of the noncorporeal Dex, who remains a pretty pallid rotter.) Only in the twist finale does the storyline echo such memorable sci-fi short fiction entries on similar themes, like Brian W. Aldiss’ “Let’s Be Frank” and Robert Bloch’s grim “Forever and Amen,” sharply turning away from the virtuous stuff offered before it.
A Christian-leaning science thriller that stays on the mild side until it produces a sudden sting.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-60489-226-0
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
