A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. The protagonist of Bardugo’s ( King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story. 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.Ī tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. (Author tour)Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Newcomers: try something-anything-less absurdly overblown, labyrinthine and inconsequential. So if by this point you have even the vaguest idea of what’s happening, why, and who’s involved, then keep reading and good luck. Williams’s synopses are as abstruse and overcomplicated as the yarn itself. Worse, they’re being stalked by the Brotherhood’s assassin, Dread, not to mention another mysterious entity known as the Other, possibly Otherland’s sentient operating system. After various children enter VR, only to become ensnared, assorted good guys-a WWI soldier, a teacher, a blind researcher, a mysterious renegade, etc.-have hacked into the supposedly impregnable Otherworld in search of the children. Otherland was created by the rich, powerful, and ruthless Brotherhood, who have plans to rule the real world too. OL2250822W Page_number_confidence 95.14 Pages 970 Partner Innodata Pdf_module_version 0.0.14 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20210626123639 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 1012 Scandate 20210625004550 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 9781857239911 Tts_version 4.Third chunk of Williams’s enormous four-part doorstopper (City of Golden Shadow, 1996 River of Blue Fire, 1998) about the eponymous virtual reality. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 13:01:04 Boxid IA40147304 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |