An inventive horror thriller energized by Thai folklore but hampered by familiar tropes.
G’s horror novel is a blend of medical thriller, supernatural mystery, and family drama.
In 2025, Tara Thavaramara, a doctor, returnsto Deacon Hospital—the same institution where her brother, Tharn, worked before vanishing in 2008. Accused of committing the “Spiderweaver Murders” that occurred at the hospital, Tharn remains a figure of unease, though former patients recall him kindly. Determined to uncover the truth, Tara hides her relation to him while pursuing her own investigation. In 2008, the younger Tara once heard a menacing voice confessing to harming Tharn and mocking her: “Unlike poor Tharn, I’ll still be here when you’re ready.” As the story alternates between past and present, Tara tries to balance her work with the tensions of home life, particularly with her mother, Mae. One night, a misdialed pager call connects her across time to Tharn, who is alive in 2008. Both struggle to understand the link—Tara wonders if it could be “a rip in time? Magic?”—but she recognizes his baritone voice instantly. As she investigates, new deaths echo the earlier killings, and Tara realizes the killer has returned. Meanwhile, back in 2008, Tharn is tormented by visions of spiders and monsters, which deepen suspicion against him. One of the novel’s strongest aspects is its incorporation of Thai culture, from specific family vocabulary to the Preta monsters “starv[ing] for human souls” with their “clawed fingers grazing the floor.” Such details lend cultural depth to a plot that otherwise relies on very familiar serial-killer tropes and a time-travel device that starts to feel both convoluted and improperly deployed. As the narrative accrues new layers of ghosts, murderers, family tensions, and movements between decades, there are very few moments for readers to catch their breath. However, the character Beam—Tara and Tharn’s younger brother—provides much-needed lightness, and the final suspenseful act helps the book land strongly.
An inventive horror thriller energized by Thai folklore but hampered by familiar tropes.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781068221828
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2025
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
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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