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.
Just after they activate the detonator there is some regret, but still.” Though the novel feels slightly overlong and the way the chapters rigidly alternate between past and present feels forced at times, it never fails to intrigue and entertain.Ī captivating, cerebral work of science fiction that may very well signal a new definitive voice in the genre.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. Their heads are always full of mushy rhetoric, faulty logic and grim fucking resolve. For instance, when Kaaro senses a suicide bomber in a nearby crowd, he thinks: “I hate suicide bombers. Perhaps Thompson’s most impressive feat is his use of Kaaro’s psychic powers to assert unprovable facts. Thompson’s rendering of the “xenosphere,” a theoretical dimension into which psychic characters can project their consciousnesses, is nothing short of brilliant. Thompson’s debut novel brims with inventive and seamless worldbuilding, eloquent prose, a strong cast of powerful black characters, and cutting social commentary on the current geopolitical shift toward authoritarianism and post-colonial trauma.
As Kaaro digs deeper and deeper into the source of the sensitives’ illness, his troubled past and riveting present come together to paint the picture of a horrifying future. Just as Kaaro meets a woman who could possibly make him happy, sensitives like him begin to get sick and die.
Kaaro, a government security officer who was a criminal before becoming a soldier, is a “sensitive,” a rare breed of human endowed with psychic powers. It’s 2066, and in Nigeria, the town of Rosewater has grown up around a strange dome that heals whomever stands beneath it.
When a detective with psychic powers begins to investigate a mysterious sickness plaguing those like him, he uncovers sinister truths that may very well call into question the survival of the human race.
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