A rambunctious space opera and metafictional celebration of the power of imagination.
In Pascal’s SF novel, a TV actress who is secretly an interplanetary/time-travelling agent ventures through different eras and dimensions seeking her MIA elder brother.
The author here compiles the three installments (some previously published) of her Zygan Emprise trilogy. In the present-day (more or less) universe, Shiloh Rush is an ingenue starring in the SF streaming series Bulwark, fighting Hollywood-scripted galactic evil. But this is actually a cover story for Shiloh’s astounding off-screen existence, which she shares with her gay British co-star William Escott. They are “catascopes,” secret agents employed by the powerful Zygan Federation of the Andromeda galaxy. Equipped with near-magical weaponry and techniques (including shape-shifting, size-shifting, levitation, teleportation, resurrection from the dead, and time travel), Shiloh and the impressively scholarly Escott (nicknamed “Spud”) embark on fraught missions all over the place (including one in 1947 to Roswell, New Mexico, that will have repercussions), often in the company of alien creatures who resemble everything from bears to whirlpools of liquid or vapor to “one being who looked like an animated Erector Set.” Shiloh’s overlord is the Omega Archon, a godlike entity with multitudinous rules for his minions; terrible punishment (simulated burning in literal Hell) awaits those who transgress—and Shiloh often transgresses. The Zygan Federation’s chief antagonist, it seems, is Theodore Benedict, an unimpressive office-clerk type who marshals the frightening resources at his disposal (including a gallery of well-placed traitors among the “Zygfed”) in a scheme to accumulate power and confound the Zygan Archon. Shiloh’s chief motivation is the fact that her cherished elder brother John Rush, a physics genius who was recruited as a Zygan catascope years earlier, disappeared on a mission six years ago. She hunts for him at every opportunity, her quest eventually taking her to parallel worlds and different dimensions. Is John alive, dead, trapped, or a secret ally of the slippery Benedict, rebelling against the increasingly malevolent Omega Archon?
While the narrative displays a certain Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy tongue-in-cheekiness, the overall effect of the novel is more akin bingeing on the vintage European Heavy Metalgraphic magazine—with a lot of Joseph Campbell and Neil Gaiman on the side. (Just for openers, there is a sortie to 2,000 years in the past that puts none other than Jesus Christ, alias Immanuel the Teacher, in peril.) The story luxuriates in both high and low culture, sometimes threatening to grow twee but righting itself with breathtaking flip-flops between the good guys and bad guys and those in between. Various plot threads reference The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Paradise Lost, Jason and the Argonauts, Star Trek, Norse mythology, and the two Arthurs—Conan Doyle and C. Clarke. The material is safe for a sophisticated YA-and-older readership; it’s the heavy slurry of fantasy jargon (like “Plegma,” “Syneph,” “M-fanning,” and “Octopodal”) and more arcane classical idioms that are tough to navigate. By the conclusion, the magical art of storytelling itself has become woven into the narrative, recalling William Goldman’s The Princess Bride (1973) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001). It is a trip worth taking.
A rambunctious space opera and metafictional celebration of the power of imagination.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Amphitrite Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 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.
