A meticulous, inventive, and sharply written debut.
A war veteran’s precognitive dreams place him in a fight for the latest AI technology in this techno-thriller.
A man nicknamed Voodoo fought in the Iraq War as an “enabler,” or target finder. His shooting skills earned him the respect of hardened soldiers like Stu Slater and Eric Francisco, men he still counts as friends today. Life is tough for Voodoo, however, with nightmares of war and his wife lost to cancer. He copes by throwing himself into work with the San Diego, California–based Directorate, a military research lab. When his fellow vets ask to meet up, Voodoo is stunned to learn that they want him to join a rescue mission in Tokyo, Japan. In a recent dream, a voice said for him to “rise and face the eastern threat.” It turns out that scientists Dr. “Taka” Hawkins and Dr. Kenzo Ichikawa, who were working on something called the “God Algorithm,” are missing. Dr. Naomi Shimoda, the third scientist involved in the research, now fears for her life. When Voodoo and company reach Tokyo, they come up against the yakuza and a shadowy financier. Hancock’s debut is a smart, emotionally deft adventure that moves at an assured pace. The narrative toggles among flashbacks to Voodoo’s youth as a river rafting guide, his time in Iraq, and the present. The Iraq sequences are fantastic, showing both the humanity and horror found in wartime. The rafting scenes portray a group of friends whose identities, once revealed, add emotional weight to the finale. Deeply affecting is Voodoo’s rationale for his life: “This desire to fill a void pushed him to achieve incredible things. It also prevented him from finding satisfaction.” The occasional moments of violence are spectacularly cinematic (“Voodoo stabbed his index finger into the man’s eye. It slid into the socket and Voodoo felt a pop”). The final page leaves Hancock’s hero refreshed for the next installment.
A meticulous, inventive, and sharply written debut.Pub Date: June 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7371501-1-4
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Class Five Press
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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