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.
Winner of the World Fantasy Award, McKillip knows what so many other fantasy writers do not, or have forgotten: less is more.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. The prose is rich, without wordiness the background mythology (only hinted at here) is original, tantalizing, and convincing. At each step of Corleu's quest another legendary figure is awakened-the Blind Lady, the Dancer, the Warlock-and they all make their way to a final confrontation at Nyx's home, Ro House. Nyx's family works against them, knowing that if the Gold King succeeds it will upset the balance that keeps peace among the holds. With the help of the sorceress Nyx Ro, estranged daughter of the Holder of Ro Holding, he seeks what the Gold King wants (though he cannot tell Nyx)-the heart of the Cygnet, Ro Holding's own patron holdsign. To free his spell-caught people (and his beloved Tiel), young Lorleu of the nomadic Wayfolk must aid the fearsome Gold King, whom Corleu has known before only as the subject of folk tales and as the patron sign of one of the ``holds,'' the regional settlements.
McKillip's first adult fantasy since the ``Riddlemaster of Hed'' series: a subtle, well-crafted tale redolent of magic and mystery, in which mythic figures are made flesh, and mortals are conscripted for an otherworldly contest.
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