Far-future crime syndicates and dueling psychics face off in this serviceable SF series opener.
In Martinez’s SF novel, a humble bartender in the far future is swept into interplanetary intrigue and war when mercenary operatives discover that he is a valuable commodity.
It’s been four centuries since an ostensibly benevolent alien race called the Hapnu visited Earth and gifted humanity with assorted advancements—chief among them is a cranial implant called a shard, which serves as a backup-record of a person’s entire mind. The shards may be transplanted to cloned bodies in the event of death, thus conferring functional immortality. Add to this the rise of psychic abilities (“talents”) in select people and the stage is set for numerous power-grabs and conspiracies among mercenary gangs and opportunistic master-criminals who can cheat death and use psychic team members as special weapons. Noah Martin, an unassuming, good-hearted Earth bartender, is working at an exclusive terrestrial club when his brain is suddenly invaded by Ada, an attractive telepath. She implants vital information and an encryption key inside Noah just before a gun battle erupts between opposing factions. Noah is immediately abducted by operatives from Ivory Point, a rather ethical group of fixers. They quickly determine that the unsuspecting Noah harbors uncommonly powerful but untrained psi powers, and that, against his will, Noah has become part of a scheme by the sinister Demacia syndicate to intervene in a Martian war and control the cure for a dreaded plague. Martinez assembles an engaging space opera with a solid gallery of adventurers, a pinch of cyberpunk noir, and a cargo of questions left unanswered (in this series-kickoff, anyhow). Chief among the puzzles is Noah’s binding with an uncanny “sphere” that turns out to be a very literal deus ex machina in the heroes’ fights. The alien Hapnu are conspicuous by their absence from most of the narrative—double-crosses, double-agents, double-dealings, and derring-do are more central to the story: “Adrenaline rushed to Noah’s head as he triple-checked his plasma gun. He didn’t feel quite real, as if he’d stumbled out of the bar and into an action movie.”
Far-future crime syndicates and dueling psychics face off in this serviceable SF series opener.Pub Date: March 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798990334144
Page Count: 252
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2025
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
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