![]() ![]() 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. Still, fans of The Eight should stagger away with bemused grins. The heroine’s devastating discoveries concerning her family’s murky history are intriguing and worthwhile pity Neville didn’t just junk the rest of it. Elsewhere, Ariel learns just how diverse and cosmopolitan her huge family is: Adolf Hitler, or “Lucky,” was a close family friend various other relatives turn out to be fascists and wolfish Wolfgang, a Nazi who’s crazy about Ariel while he thinks she’s thoroughly Aryan, is crushed to learn that her grandfather was a gypsy. There’s more than one manuscript, of course. What are they all after? It seems a set of ancient sacred objects, or “Hallows,” possess immense magical powers, and the manuscript describes-maybe locates-those objects. Meanwhile, in numerous historical asides, we meet Ariel’s great-aunt Clio (she finds something important in the Sibyl’s cave in 1890), Jesus, Aleister Crowley, Pontius Pilate, four Roman emperors, Joseph of Arimathea, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and. The devilishly handsome Wolfgang Hauser of the International Atomic Energy Agency also shows an interest in the manuscript, as does Uncle Lafcadio, arriving from Austria, violin teacher Dacian Bassarides (Ariel’s grandfather, we eventually learn), and Ariel’s boss, Pastor Owen Dart. Then a decidedly undead Sam (bad guys tried to assassinate him and got the wrong man) contacts his sister and says he sent her the encoded document, though it’s never arrived. Among other things, he had a manuscript for Ariel that, suddenly, all sorts of people are eager to lay their hands on. Ariel Behn, a nuclear security worker and part-time code-breaker, is devastated when her beloved brother, Sam (he isn’t really her brother and. Like Neville’s 1988 debut, The Eight, another daft, overstuffed, sprawling sofa of a yarn involving dozens of famous figures, places, and objects, along with a mysterious manuscript that nobody ever gets to read-oh, yeah, and the collapse of communism.
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