A pleasing pastiche of ’50s genre and anthology TV.
A small-town musician’s life gets exciting following the appearance of a stranger in this debut SF novella.
New Mexico, 1959. Fender Lee is a “master mechanic, guitar virtuoso and twenty-two year old ex-con” who works at the Last Chance service station in a small desert town. It isn’t as remote as it sounds. In the last year, Fender has waited on Howard Hughes and Johnny Cash, both of whom offered him jobs if he ever ends up leaving the station. But he would prefer not to move on so he can figure out a way to win the heart of Ruby, the waitress at the nearby Bluebird Diner. Then an odd, destructive storm rolls into town and, with it, an unusual visitor: a man from back East called Leon Green, who says he has come to “explore the desert” and “meet some Indians.” Fender soon forms a band with Leon and another friend, playing shows for the adoring teens at the Bluebird and finally gaining the attention of Ruby. Fender is concerned about incurring the wrath of Chigger, his rival for Ruby’s affections. But when Chigger suddenly disappears, it presents Fender with a new mystery to solve. Couey’s prose is neat and leisurely, capturing the rhythms of the small, mid-20th-century desert town: “On Saturday night, the crowd spills out the door. It looks like every teenager for fifty miles around has turned up. There is hardly room for anyone to move much less dance. Fender and Stringbean have a quick consultation then together start putting tables on top of others.” The author explains in her introductory note that the tale is inspired by the episodic television of the ’50s, and she manages to capture that feel exactly. The book’s novella length contributes to the sense of an enclosed story. The narrative is fairly episodic, but it picks up in the second half once the more speculative elements of the plot begin to emerge. Though rather straightforward in some ways, Fender’s tale should please those who share Couey’s nostalgia for an earlier era in American storytelling.
A pleasing pastiche of ’50s genre and anthology TV.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 33
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2023
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
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
