A careful and affecting conclusion to an ambitious saga.
Couto’s epic trilogy about colonial Mozambique concludes with a harrowing trek from the conquered land.
The first book in Couto’s Sands of the Emperor series, Woman of the Ashes (2018), turned on clashes between rival Mozambican tribes before Portuguese forces claimed power in the late 1800s; the second, The Sword and the Spear (2020), focused on the unlikely romance between Imani, a young Mozambican woman, and a Portuguese sergeant. In this story, the deposed emperor, Ngungunyane, is being forcibly removed along with his court from the country and into exile, paraded in public on their way. (“Portugal needed such a display in order to discourage new uprisings on the part of the Africans,” Couto writes.) Imani, who’s pregnant, is attempting to serve as a neutral translator on this trip, but she finds herself buffeted by competing interests—Ngungunyane wants to claim her as another one of his wives, seditionists want her complicity in undoing the Portuguese colonists’ plans, and sailors subject her to various assaults, sexual and otherwise. There’s a plainspokenness to the prose (via Brookshaw’s translation) that belies the fact that, as in the prior two books, colonialism is a carnival of horrors, destroying families and wrecking folkways. The twist here, as the narrative makes its way to Lisbon, is that the degradations more fully expose the cruelty of Portugal’s press, diplomatic corps, and royalty, as Ngungunyane’s arrival provides an opportunity for moral posturing and power plays. Imani increasingly recognizes how untenable her position is: As her lover tells her, “The same narrative that paved the way for our encounter made our love impossible.” And it’s Imani and her child who fall under the greatest threat. The closing pages fast-forward the story into the 20th century and Mozambique’s path to independence, ending the saga on a more positive note. But the scars are lasting.
A careful and affecting conclusion to an ambitious saga.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-374-60553-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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