A page-turning cautionary tale providing a glimpse into a world in which greed, racism, and hate shape our future.
Set in a near future, Erickson’s SF novel—a reimagining of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—follows an alleged terrorist on Mars and the man tasked with killing her.
Former captain Willard Bennett has been in prison for more than two years, mostly due to his failure to complete a mission involving Cassandra Kurtz, a convicted insurrectionist whose attacks on Mars’ colonies has challenged “the very foundation of [the Third Republic] society” and jeopardized the fascist government’s expansion on Mars. (The Third Republic is considered a successor to the Third Reich.) After having his elite patrician status and all of its benefits revoked, Bennett is given a last chance at redemption: He must locate and destroy Kurtz’s base of operations on the red planet and assassinate the elusive terrorist. Once Bennett begins going through confidential files chronicling Kurtz’s nightmarish past, however, he experiences an epiphany of sorts—his privileged existence has allowed him to sleepwalk through a reality that includes slavery, sex trafficking, and the dehumanization of entire populations of people. His search for Kurtz through the subterranean wilds of Mars—which are populated by genetically modified beasts—quickly turns into a search for himself as he is forced to reevaluate his entire life and all of his misinformed decisions. The cast of deeply developed characters and the impressive focus on worldbuilding are obvious strengths, as is the relentless pacing, but the novel’s real power comes from its timely thematic punch: “I can easily see why it would be better to be free in hell than a servant above” (John Milton joins Conrad in the novel’s literary allusions. Erickson ends the novel with a tantalizing revelation, which could easily be expanded into future installments of the series.
A page-turning cautionary tale providing a glimpse into a world in which greed, racism, and hate shape our future.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2024
ISBN: 9781942708551
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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