A virtuosic work that should please fans of genre-bending sagas.
James’ latest genre-defying novel in his Hourglass series fuses paranormal fantasy, existential horror, and eschatological thriller.
After 2022’s The Ferryman’s Toll, James continues the grand-scale narrative chronicling the conflict between opposing paranormal organizations. As Hourglass operatives battle the forces of the Cairnwood Society—“a cabal of wealthy and infernal sorts, human and non-human”—on Earth and in various alternate realities between Boschian dream realms and the undead vistas of the afterlife, humankind has a much more pressing problem. The mythical hereafter has been long destroyed; now the future of humanity is left with only sprawling nightmarish wastelands ruled by monstrous overlords. The only hope is to find an artifact that can allegedly stitch together a new paradisical afterlife: the coveted Firmament Needle. If the majority of storylines can be compared to narrative consommé, then this novel is the thickest of stews. Tasty morsels abound—the worldbuilding and backstory are extraordinary, with mind-blowing dreamscapes throughout. The ensemble cast of characters is deeply and insightfully developed, even otherworldly characters like Calkarion, a mulelike humanoid strapped to a mechanical spider who befriends Konstantin Kozlov, a Russian necromancer, in his search for the Needle. But it’s the diversity of the multiple intertwining plot threads that makes this such a page-turner. Hourglass operatives like Clyde Williams, whose soul has been tainted by a Babylonian dream demon, battle their adversaries—and themselves—in jaw-dropping fight sequences. Kozlov and company embark on a phantasmagorical quest through post-apocalyptic landscapes inhabited with nightmare-inducing predators, which include a living circus filled with killer clowns and carnies. Through it all, the author succeeds in delivering an overarching message about the pitfalls of misplaced faith: “Perhaps we all do need a little faith. Not in any of this…but in ourselves to do what’s right.”
A virtuosic work that should please fans of genre-bending sagas.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781738495627
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Bottled Lightning Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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