THE PARADOX HOTEL | Kirkus Reviews

Are we not males? We’re—nicely, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does on this pleasant yarn, following on his bestseller World Battle Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one factor. A volcanic eruption is kind of one other, for, because the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ newest places it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological facet, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most individuals.” Possibly, however the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if solely out of self-defense. Brooks locations the epicenter of the Bigfoot conflict in a high-tech hideaway populated by the form of individuals you may discover in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know the right way to do a lot of something however tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding coronary heart, the know-it-all mental who seems to know the unsuitable issues, the immigrant with a troublesome backstory and an intuition for survival. Certainly, the novel does double responsibility as a survival handbook, packed full of fine recommendation—for example, strive to not get wounded, for “damage turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking on our assets, our time to look after you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot on the planet whereas peppering his narrative with well timed social criticism about dangerous conduct on the human facet of the battle: The explosion of Rainier may need been higher forecast had the president not slashed the price range of the U.S. Geological Survey, resulting in “speedy suspension of the Nationwide Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s all the time somebody round trying to monetize the pure catastrophe and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a professional at constructing suspense even when it performs out in some relatively spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a brief spear that takes its identify from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the useless man’s coronary heart and lungs.” Grossness apart, it places you proper there on the scene.

A tasty, if not all the time tasteful, story of supernatural mayhem that followers of King and Crichton alike will take pleasure in.