Is Munson’s second novel (The November Criminals, 2010) an unsatisfyingly resolved stand-alone or the prelude to a larger...
Some teenagers joy ride; some join gangs; some do drugs; and some, apparently, do magic.
For hundreds of years, the powerful magicians who use wands and other tools (the “assholes” of the title) have repressed the much smaller group who perform magic with will alone. Michael Wood is a somewhat thuggish teen who might possibly have a decent heart and brain buried beneath his hormonal and violent impulses. When his odd classmate Hob Callahan introduces him to the magical minority and their struggle with the assholes, Michael signs on with barely a second thought. The conflict doesn’t really surface in the present day until Hob and his pals steal a number of magical objects, prompting a brutal campaign of retaliation. The philosophical difference between the two cabals seems to be couched as a form of class warfare, but that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. True, the assholes are based at a snooty prep school, but their adversaries consist of two wealthy adults and a few kids living in pricey New York City apartments, some of whom attend a Catholic school with tuition of $30,000 a year. There’s even a mix of racial and religious backgrounds on both sides. The war’s antecedents are steeped in high tragedy, but the modern conflict feels petty. It’s hard to tell whether Michael and his companions have any true sense of allegiance to a higher cause, and his crush, Alabama, is as happy to recklessly use a gun as to employ magic to commit mayhem. Perhaps the behavior (and the annoyingly choppy sentence fragments of Michael’s first-person narration) is meant to serve as an insight into the chaotic nature of the teenage mind, set against the occasionally beautifully described, hallucinatory milieu of the magical world, but it all seems pointless.
Is Munson’s second novel (The November Criminals, 2010) an unsatisfyingly resolved stand-alone or the prelude to a larger series? It doesn't really matter.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-2774-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2015
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, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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