A strong series finale that celebrates the growth of both individuals and societies.
An imminent cosmic threat forces battling factions of humanity to wage war on two fronts in this third installment of an SF trilogy.
It is 2093, and the survivors of the asteroid called Jurbay that destroyed half of the United States exist as “The 28 United.” In the city of Ash, their leader, Avery DeTornada, has formed a truce with the army of The Third, led by a man called Raghill. Avery believes in combining forces and preparing for war against another army led by Chapman, her 10-year-old son, who is a half genetically engineered being. But Avery’s most trusted friends, Morris and Annalynn, believe that tackling another threat should take precedence. Five years ago, a second asteroid was discovered heading for Earth. This menace, named Jurbay’s Baby, must be dragged or blown off course within three years, otherwise the survivors’ monumental struggles will be for naught. Complicating Avery’s goals is Degnan, the wily operator of the Dark Market and creator of weapons capable of changing humanity’s fate. While Avery feels compelled to fight for her husband, McGinty; and their infant son, Justice, she must tread a dark moral landscape. Thankfully, her colleagues have superseded her authority in preparing for the asteroid. Yet the manipulative Chapman is willing to force Avery into bloody terrestrial warfare. Mansfield’s finale deftly addresses how relationships evolve over time and under extreme duress. When Annalynn and Raghill, who grew up together, begin working closely on curtailing the asteroid, new emotions overtake them. Only Avery’s chapters are first person yet the prose never fails to instill the “ticking of the world’s clock” in readers. Combining this warning with mentions of natural beauty (“We venture...into the midst of multiple groves of hemlock trees”), the book echoes the present-day call for urgent action on climate change. Some of the conceptual play from prior volumes persists in the “repwas,” creatures that are a blend of reptiles and wasps. While many of the emotional turns are grim, the powerful narrative offers quiet hope with Avery’s line, “We may always disagree about our methods, but I trust you to...[s]eek a world of words and not weapons.”
A strong series finale that celebrates the growth of both individuals and societies.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 9798848982282
Page Count: 404
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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