VanderMeer fans will treasure this installment in the Borne saga while hoping for something more substantial to follow—and...
A lyrical if dark-hearted sidenote to VanderMeer’s wonderfully inventive dystopian novel Borne (2017).
When the singularity arrives, as it surely will, it will do so on extended wings. Where Borne, the blobby union of various genetic brews, escaped from the ruins of a biotech factory owned by the spectacularly malign Company, the Strange Bird, as she is called, “did not know what sky really was as she flew down underground corridors in the dark,” experiencing the rapturous freedom of flight while not quite understanding what was happening to her outside her cage. The Strange Bird, like all critters in this hellish place, is not just bird, but comprises bits and pieces of biotechnology, other DNA, and even some human material—though this heritage does not incline her to like or trust humans, not in the least. Good thing, for just about every human she encounters has designs on her, from the old man who captures her out in the desert and assures her that otherwise she “would be in something’s belly by now” to the magician who marvels at the “sad, unlucky lab bird that never existed before” even as she speculates about how the Strange Bird, ever worse for the wear, might be remade into something more immediately useful. Mord the giant bear, Rachel, Wick, and other figures from Borne turn up to join in fun and games that make the future world of the Terminator film series seem right jolly. The story doesn’t always quite add up, and there’s some spackling and grouting to do to make it neatly join up to its parent novel, doubtless the work of sequels to come. Still, Vandermeer writes circles around most fantasists at work today, and the story, while rewarding of itself, is of an elegantly bleak piece with its predecessor, reminiscent of the best of Brian Aldiss and Philip K. Dick.
VanderMeer fans will treasure this installment in the Borne saga while hoping for something more substantial to follow—and soon.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-53792-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
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 breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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