UPDATE! Dianna Love: BELADOR SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Dianna Love's BELADOR SERIES with a review of Rogue Belador, the seventh novel in the series.

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review.

Sylvain Neuvel: THEMIS FILES SERIES

Author:  Sylvain Neuvel 
Series:  THEMIS FILES 
Plot Type:  Science Fiction Mystery/Thriller

Ratings:  Violence—3; Sensuality—2; Humor—2   

Publisher:  Del Rey (4/2016)

     Sleeping Giants (4/2016)

     Waking Gods (4/2017)

This ongoing post was revised and updated on 5/27/2017 to include a review of Waking Gods, the second novel. That review appears first, followed by an overview of the world-building and a review of the first novel, Sleeping Giants.

                         NOVEL 2: Waking Gods                         
PUBLISHER'S BLURB: 
     In the gripping sequel to Sleeping Giants, which was hailed by Pierce Brown as “a luminous conspiracy yarn...reminiscent of The Martian and World War Z,” Sylvain Neuvel’s innovative series about human-alien contact takes another giant step forward.

    As a child, Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand, buried deep within the earth. As an adult, she’s dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown origin buried in pieces around the world? Years of investigation have produced intriguing answers—and even more perplexing questions. But the truth is closer than ever before when a second robot, more massive than the first, materializes and lashes out with deadly force.

    Now humankind faces a nightmare invasion scenario made real, as more colossal machines touch down across the globe. But Rose and her team at the Earth Defense Corps refuse to surrender. They can turn the tide if they can unlock the last secrets of an advanced alien technology. The greatest weapon humanity wields is knowledge in a do-or-die battle to inherit the Earth...and maybe even the stars. 

MY REVIEW: 
     The story begins ten years after the ending of Sleeping Giants. During that time, Kara Resnick and Vincent Couture—now a happily married couple—have been traveling the world with the giant alien robot named Themis, mostly doing public relations appearances to maintain the perception that Themis is a friendly resource to the Earth and to bolster worldwide support of Earth Defense Corps (EDC), which was founded by the United Nations nine years ago to extract new technologies from Themis "for the benefit of mankind and to protect this planet against extraterrestrial threats." Kara and Vincent are Themis' pilots—the only two people on Earth who have the ability (and the permission) to operate the robot.

     Life on Earth has been going smoothly until—out of nowhere and without warning—another gigantic robot suddenly appears in the middle of London. At first, the new robot (named Kronos) does nothing but stand motionless in a city park, but when the British government allows fear and impatience to overrule EDC's advice and mounts a full military attack on Kronos, the robot pulses out a wall of white light that literally erases a huge area of London, including 3,600 people and all of the buildings, leaving nothing by a field of dirt. When the EDC sends Themis to try to take down Kronos, Kara and Vincent are successful, but then more huge robots pop up in all of the major cities of the world. These robots begin pulsing out a white fog that kills millions of people. Unexpectedly, small percentages in each city appear to be immune to the gas/fog and survive. The anonymous narrator tortures one of the survivors in a horrific scene that just doesn't ring true, either to the character or to the series as a whole. 

     Back at the EDC, Dr. Rose Franklin, head of the Science Division of the EDC, tries to figure out why the robots have appeared, why they are hostile to all human overtures (both friendly and unfriendly), and how the EDC can end this huge global crisis. Unfortunately, a lot of people die while Rose is scrambling to solve the problem. Eventually, Rose begins to analyze the DNA of both the victims and the survivors of the robots' attacks. Neuvel takes us through some brilliant twists and turns as Rose follows her instincts and her science and comes to a shocking theory about why the robots came to Earth and what they want Earth's humans to prove.

     In a related story thread, the anonymous narrator (the same one featured in Sleeping Giants) enlists the aid two disgraced characters from the first novel: Chief Warrant Officer Ryan Mitchell, a love-struck pilot who nearly killed Vincent, and Dr. Alyssa Papantoniou, a sociopathic geneticist who kidnapped and experimented on Kara. One result of Alyssa's experimentation plays a major role in Waking Gods.

     Once again, Neuvel tells the story through interview transcripts and diary entries. Each major character has plenty of time between action scenes to indulge in some angst-filled interior monologues (the diaries). One warning: this is definitely not a stand-alone novel, so you will have a tough time fully understanding many of the references to past events if you have not read Sleeping Giants. 

     Although the plot is engaging, it slows down several times when Neuvel indulges in some overly technical and polemical rhetoric on a variety of subjects/causes. For example, there are a number of extremely technical discussions of genome science, like this one: "DNA's a nucleic acid....It's made up of smaller things called nucleotides. To make a nucleotide, you need three things. A phosphate, a base, and a sugar...If the sugar is the one we call deoxyribose, you get deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA."(and it goes on for several more paragraphs). Later in the book, the narrator indulges in paragraphs of overblown rhetoric denouncing America's war with Iraq after the 9/11 attacks. He claims to be justifying his torture of the survivor of the fog attack, but it seems so unrelated to the matter at hand that it brings the action to a complete halt.

     As the plot wound down, I thought that this must be the final book in the series, but then the final sentence turned it into a cliff hanger, so there may be another book in the offing. If it were not for the technical and polemical insertions, I would give this book a five-star rating. But I'd have to ratchet that down to about a three because those sections give the book a choppy, start-stop feeling that throws off the pacing. 

     Click HERE to go to this novel's Amazon.com page where you can read or listen to an excerpt by clicking on the cover art for print or the "Listen" icon for audio.

                         WORLD-BUILDING                         

    The series is set in the modern world with no futuristic elements. In this fictional world—just as in our real world—there is global unrest as nations clash with one another and make secret deals in order to attain greater power. Forging those deals is the job of anonymous behind-the-scenes people (generally men) who make decisions that are in their own best interest and make and break alliances, as they deem necessary. 

                              NOVEL 1: Sleeping Giants                              
PUBLISHER'S BLURB: 
     A page-turning debut in the tradition of Michael Crichton, World War Z, and The Martian, Sleeping Giants is a thriller fueled by an earthshaking mystery—and a fight to control a gargantuan power. 

     A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand. 

     Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, and then rejected. 

     But some can never stop searching for answers. 

     Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top-secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery—and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction? 

     NOTE: Sony has optioned the movie rights for Sleeping Giants. David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Mission Impossible) is writing the script. Josh Bratman and Matt Tolmach are producing.

MY REVIEW: 

    The person who controls the telling of this story is an unnamed interviewer (or interrogator) who gives the characters—and the reader—only the information he deems necessary. The story-telling method is mostly a series of interview scripts and personal journal entries. That means that the reader rarely has direct access to actions and events in real time because the interviews and journal entries—the discussion and analysis—must necessarily come after—not during—the occurrence of the events. This fact removes the reader from the thrill of battle, so to speak, but it does provide an opportunity to watch the interviewer in action as he manipulates the interviewees by prodding them to accept his interpretation of the facts and come to the conclusions that suit his long-term plans.

     The basic premise is that thousands of years ago a giant statue of a woman (20 stories high) was buried in pieces all over the globe. The interviewer is taking the lead in a project designed to locate all of the statue's body parts and put them under the control of a scientist—Dr. Rose Franklin—who will reconstruct it and figure out how it works. Rose first encountered one of the statue's hands when she was a child and fell into a crater. "There I was, this tiny little thing at the bottom of the hole, lying on my back in the palm of a giant metal hand." Now, in a twist of irony, (or perhaps through someone's secretive, long-term planning), she will be leading the team that discovers all of the statue's secrets.

     As more and more body parts arrive at Rose's laboratory under the Denver airport, it soon becomes clear that this is not a statue, but a highly sophisticated robot, and Rose's team is expanded to include two pilots who must crawl inside the robot and figure out how to make her move. The first pilot is Chief Warrant Officer 3 Kara Resnick. Kara is a stubborn, outspoken helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army. In her interviews, she constantly argues with and questions the interviewer, mostly to no avail. He definitely has an agenda, and he doesn't plan to share it with anyone. The other pilot is Chief Warrant Officer Ryan Mitchell. Two more members round out the list of supporting characters: Vincent Couture, a Canadian linguist, and Dr. Alyssa Papantoniou, a geneticist. Vincent's job is to translate some strange writing on the walls of the room in which the first robotic hand was found. Alyssa's task is to analyze the DNA of the pilots to understand why the robot seems to accept or reject their efforts to start her up and control her movements.

     The story moves along at a slow-to-moderate pace, and I must admit that it took me a while to get into it. You have to recognize that this is not a smoothly constructed narrative and accept the fact that the episodic style can make the story-telling seem a bit choppy. The novel's unconventional structure works well because the plot itself isn't traditional (although it does have its own version of exposition, setting, rising action, conflict, and climax). Contrary to the publisher's teaser, the plot does not center on Rose and the giant hand. Instead, it focuses on how Rose and her team members interact with the interviewer, with the robot, and among themselves as they familiarize themselves with this new technology and its implications for their personal lives and the world at large. It's also a dark and cynical take on modern world politics—which turns out to be not very different from the political shenanigans currently taking place in our real world. 

     Once you get past the initial interviews and into the personal interactions of the characters, the interviewer's control begins to slip as human emotions like romance, jealousy, and ambition enter the picture and send events on unplanned paths. My favorite character is the snarky, manipulative interviewer, with prickly Kara as a close second. Although the interviewer at first appears to be a cold and heartless man, he soon shows himself to have a bit of a soft side (although his emotions never prevent him from taking some very heartless actions when he deems them necessary to further his long-term goals). The interviewer is like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, appearing to the characters as an all-seeing, all-powerful authority figure, but eventually being outed as something else when his curtain is pulled away. Although the initial interviews are coldly humorless, the characters (especially the interviewer) loosen up as the story advances, allowing some dry, sarcastic humor to filter through.

     The plot takes many twists and turns, many of which are due directly to human frailties, an ironic turn of events in a book devoted to an extremely powerful technical, non-human wonder. The epilogue provides the cliff-hanger that will launch the story line of the second book.
    
     Even though it took me a while to get into and through this novel, I'm glad that I made the effort. I noticed that one or two Amazon.com reviewers claimed that there were inconsistencies in the plot, but that's not the case. If you pay attention to what the characters say in their interviews and in their journals, everything fits together perfectly. This is a book to read at a leisurely pace, meeting and getting to know the characters, understanding the political and personal implications of each major event, and—especially—getting into the interviewer's head as his plans don't take him exactly where he wants—and needs—to go. This is an extremely inventive story told in a very creative manner, and I highly recommend it. Click HERE to read or listen to an excerpt from Sleeping Giants on the novel's Amazon.com page by clicking on the cover art for print or the "Listen" icon for audio.

FULL DISCLOSURE: My review of Sleeping Giants is based on an electronic advance reading copy (ARC) of the book that I received from the publisher through NetGalley. I received no promotional or monetary rewards, and the opinions in this review are strictly my own.

                              ABOUT THE AUTHOR                               

     Sylvain Neuvel dropped out of high school at age 15. Along the way, he has been a journalist, worked in soil decontamination, sold ice cream in California, and peddled furniture across Canada. He received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Chicago. He taught linguistics in India, and worked as a software engineer in Montreal. He is also a certified translator, though he wishes he were an astronaut. He likes to tinker, dabbles in robotics and is somewhat obsessed with Halloween. He absolutely loves toys; his girlfriend would have him believe that he has too many, so he writes about aliens and giant robots as a blatant excuse to build action figures (for his son, of course). Click HERE and HERE to read on-line interviews with Neuvel about Sleeping Giants.

UPDATE! Terry Spear: HEART OF THE WOLF SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Terry Spear's HEART OF THE WOLF SERIES with a review of Alpha Wolf Need Not Apply, the nineteenth novel in this series. 

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review. 

UPDATE! Charlaine Harris: MIDNIGHT TEXAS TRILOGY

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Charlaine Harris's MIDNIGHT TEXAS TRILOGY with a review of Night Shift, the third and FINAL novel in the trilogy. 

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review.

New Novel: Julie Myerson: "The Stopped Heart"

Author:  Julie Myerson
Title:  The Stopped Heart
Plot Type: Psychological Thriller with Ghosts  
Ratings:  Violence—4; Sensuality—3; Humor—1   
Publisher and Titles:  Harper  Perennial (3/2016)

                    PUBLISHER'S BLURB                     

     Internationally bestselling author Julie Myerson’s beautifully written, yet deeply chilling, novel of psychological suspense explores the tragedies—past and present—haunting a picturesque country cottage. 

     Mary Coles and her husband, Graham, have just moved to a cottage on the edge of a small village. The house hasn’t been lived in for years, but they are drawn to its original features and surprisingly large garden, which stretches down into a beautiful apple orchard. It’s idyllic, remote, picturesque: exactly what they need to put the horror of the past behind them.



     One hundred and fifty years earlier, a huge elm tree was felled in front of the cottage during a raging storm. Beneath it lies a young man with a shock of red hair, presumed dead—surely no one could survive such an accident. But the red-haired man is alive, and after a brief convalescence is taken in by the family living in the cottage and put to work in the fields. The children all love him, but the eldest daughter, Eliza, has her reservations. There’s something about the red-haired man that sits ill with her. A presence. An evil.

 

     Back in the present, weeks after moving to the cottage and still drowning beneath the weight of insurmountable grief, Mary Coles starts to sense there’s something in the house. Children’s whispers, footsteps from above, half-caught glimpses of figures in the garden. A young man with a shock of red hair wandering through the orchard.

 

     Has Mary’s grief turned to madness? Or have the events that took place so long ago finally come back to haunt her…? 

                    MY REVIEW                     

    From the very first paragraph, the reader realizes that something indescribably horrific has occurred as Myerson presents us with a sunny, blue-sky day that is immediately superseded by the appearance of a graphically portrayed woman—blood-soaked and nearly speechless—who brings news of a terrible tragedy. But that is just one of the awful occurrences that are at the heart of this novel, which interweaves two sets of characters and events: one from the present and one from a century and a half in the past.

     In the opening chapters, Laura and Graham Coles move in to a rickety old cottage in rural England, a house so authentic in detail that it still has its backyard water pump, overgrown garden and orchard, the rotting carcass of a long-fallen elm tree, and a rickety apple shed. The Coles are looking for peace and an escape from grief in the wake of the death of their two young daughters, the full details of which remain unexplained for several hundred pages (but with enough clues to alert the reader to the horror of their deaths). This story line is mostly delivered in the third person voice from Laura's perspective. They soon meet and become friends with a local couple, Eddie and Deborah.

    Intermingling with Laura's story is that of Eliza and her family: her parents and her seven younger siblings, who lived in the same cottage 150 years ago. Eliza narrates events in her 13-year-old first-person voice. Her story revolves around a new addition to their household: a red-haired, snake-tattooed young man named James H. Dix, who first appears in the middle of a terrible storm, only to be nearly crushed by a lightning-struck elm tree. James wriggles his way into the family, at once feared and loved by the younger children. Soon, he becomes an object of fascination, and then lust, for Eliza. Eliza and her sisters and brothers are wonderfully portrayed, with their innocence and humor heightening the sense of tragedy that awaits them.

     Myerson binds the two narratives closely, with no separation or clarifying symbols or punctuation between them. Each chapter contains multiple sub-chapters, each of which begins with an extra line space and an all-caps opening sentence, but those clues do not necessarily signal a change in the narrator. At first, this mash-up of time and voice is a bit confusing, but soon a rhythm establishes itself, and the two stories begin to overlap like waves, as if grief and horror experienced in the present can penetrate the past, and past events can seep into the present. When Laura starts hearing the ghostly voices of children and begins seeing a red-headed man flashing through the hedge, and when little Lottie (Eliza's sister) wants to name a kitten Merricoles (a futuristic reference to Mary Coles) and speaks of a “lady with the long black hair. The one that cries all the time…” I have to admit that shivers ran down my spine. Eventually, this intersection of stories graduates from ethereal to physical when Graham makes a gruesome discovery in the back garden.

    The two story lines have some commonalities: male figures (James and Eddie) who offer false hope, deceitful love, and phony comfort; children who suffer abuse and death; and parents who plunge into a deep well of anger and grief. Both Eliza and Laura fall under the spells of the duplicitous men, with wildly different outcomes. Eliza falls hard for James, even though her first impression of him is that, "He had the look of someone who'd just walked out of a room where bad things had happened." Mary finds herself being stalked by Eddie, but soon finds that she is able to talk to him about subjects she can't speak about to her husband. Myerson adds reality and suspense to the mix by introducing Graham's rebellious, Goth-girl daughter, Ruby, (by an earlier marriage) and her secretive, tight-lipped friend, Lisa, who also gets caught up in the false promise of love and escape.

     Myerson enhances the horror of her story by setting it in a comforting nest of elegant descriptions of normal, everyday life and the wonders of nature. A bee leaving a bloom, "falling backwards into the air, lifting off and away"; Lizzie's "wild, smashed feeling" when she gets her first look at the sea; Lizzie watching "the great black crows swooping up and down over the hazy, lilac-brown clods of muddy earth" at twilight; and a sunny day when "the hollyhocks unfurled their hairy buds and stood in their lemon and salmon rows."

     Some of the nature images foreshadow the violence that is just around the corner: "A wren started to build its nest under the eaves...and as usual the cat sat and watched, waiting to kill the fledglings just as soon as they hatched." And, on a warm, wet morning, "The earth on the grave was fresh and sad and brown." 

     This is the same technique that David Lynch uses so beautifully (and horribly) in the opening scene of his iconic film Blue Velvet (which moves from chirping birds and white picket fences to a tragic front-yard accident; then to a trip through the dark, murderous, bug-dominated underworld of the green grass; and eventually to a severed human ear—all in the first few moments). It's a perfect illustration of how evil can lurk under the surface of a seemingly "normal" human existence.

     This is a dark and suspense-filled novel that is hard to put down once you've read the first few pages because you get pulled immediately into the heart-breaking emotional drama and ever-tightening tension that build to nearly unbearable levels. Unfortunately, Myerson's resolution of Mary's grief is too abrupt, and it lacks a plausible catalyst. In the final pages, her sudden, baseless change of heart about the cottage, her grief, and her future comes out of nowhere, providing a convenient, but ultimately unsatisfying, conclusion to an otherwise well-told story. 

     Some reviewers have compared this novel to Gone Girl and Girl on the Train, so if you enjoyed those books, you'll probably be intrigued with this one. Click HERE to read or listen to an excerpt from The Stopped Heart on its Amazon.com page by clicking on either the cover art or the "Listen" icon. Click HERE to read the first two chapters on the novel's HarperCollins page.

                    ABOUT THE AUTHOR                     

     Julie Myerson is an English author and critic. She also works as a journalist and contributes reviews and articles to newspapers, magazines and radio programs. Myerson writes both fiction and nonfiction books. She is also known for having written a long-running column in The Guardian entitled "Living with Teenagers" based on her own family experiences.

     Her first novel, Sleepwalking (1994), was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys prize. Something Might Happen was shortlisted for the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and 2005 WH Smith Literary Award. Her other works include The Touch (1996), Laura Blundy (2000), The Story of You (2006), Out of Breath (2007) and The Quickening (2013). She has also authored a few nonfiction works including Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived In Our House, which was dramatized on BBC Radio 4, Not A Games Person (2005) and The Lost Child (2009). Click HERE to read a more detailed biography of Julie Myerson.

New Novel: J. C. Nelson: "The Reburialists"

Author:  J. C. Nelson 
Title:  The Reburialists 
Plot Type:  Urban Fantasy (UF)
Ratings:  Violence—4; Sensuality—4; Humor—2   
Publisher and Titles:  Ace (3/2016)

                    PUBLISHER'S BLURB                    

     Burying the dead is easy.  Keeping them down is difficult. At the Bureau of Special Investigations, agents encounter all sorts of paranormal evils. So for Agent Brynner Carson, driving a stake through a rampaging three-week-old corpse is par for the course. Except this cadaver is different. It’s talking—and it has a message about his father, Heinrich. 

     The reanimated stiff delivers an ultimatum written in bloody hieroglyphics, and BSI Senior Analyst Grace Roberts is called in to translate. It seems that Heinrich Carson stole the heart of Ra-Ame, the long-dead god of the Re-Animus. She wants it back. The only problem is that Heinrich took the secret of its location to his grave. 

     With the arrival of Ra-Ame looming and her undead army wreaking havoc, Brynner and Grace must race to find the key to stopping her. It’s a race they can’t afford to lose, but then again, it’s just another day on the job. 

                  WORLD-BUILDING AND CHARACTER INTRODUCTION                    
    The novel is set in a world that is nearly identical to our real world, but with one important exception: the continuing existence of zombies, which are called by any number of names, depending upon who is doing the labeling. Scientists call them corpse organisms, or co-orgs. Field operatives (zombie hunters) call them meat-skins and other names, depending on the length of time they've been dead and on their behavioral characteristics. All of the co-orgs were once ordinary human corpses, but when they become the host of the Re-Animus, they regain their ability to move and to attack as directed. Although co-orgs can appear to be alive and sentient, they are not. Their intelligence and their ability to move come solely from the powers of the Re-Animus that is controlling them and speaking through them from afar.

     Scientists and field operatives disagree as to what exactly a Re-Animus is. The zombie hunters—all of whom carry and wear as many religious artifacts as possible—believe that a Re-Animus is an evil spirit, a demonic supernatural being. "The field teams carried iron crucifixes and wooden crosses, garlic and a million other herbs. Relics, they called them." The scientists are still researching the true nature of the Re-Animus, but they are certain that they can explain its powers through logic and scientific research. For example scientists believe that some of the field agents' relics work because "behind every one of these, a principal surely lurked. Herbs, for instance, might interfere with communication pathways in hosts. Iron impurities might disrupt communication. Wood could (and did) cause allergic reactions." 

     The Bureau of Special Investigations (BSI), which has offices all over the world, is in charge of keeping the co-orgs and the Re-Animus under control. In this world, when a person dies, he or she is either cremated (if the family can afford it) or buried with slit Achilles tendons and a pinned jaw to prevent the body from being able to walk or chomp down if it were ever raised and taken over by a Re-Animus.

     The hero of the novel is Brynner (rhymes with "grinner") Carson, the golden boy of BSI and its number one field operative. Brynner's father was the greatest field operative of them all, and his mother, who ran the BSI investigative laboratories, vanished under mysterious circumstances when Brynner was in his early teens. Brynner believes that he was always destined to be a killer of co-orgs. His father trained him hard, introducing Brynner to fighting the dead when he was just a child: "I thought about the first time I met a co-org. Dad brought it home in a box and locked me in the room with it and a hatchet until I took care of business. I didn't sleep for a week afterward." In the scene that opens the story, Brynner is attacked by the Re-Animus and thinks to himself, "Thank God my dad had homeschooled me in corpse-killing," Brynner has been a lone wolf even since he ran away from home several years after his mother's disappearance. By that time, he was living with his aunt and uncle, and his father was wandering the world trying to find his wife. Brynner has learned to dull the agony of his existence by overdosing on sex and fame. Everywhere he goes, people want his autograph and women want to sleep with him, and he's always ready for both. While he's indulging himself in hedonistic pursuits, he can temporarily forget the fact that he has to go back to his real life—daily battles with a never-ending stream of vicious co-orgs. Like his fellow field agents, Brynner relies heavily on his religious faith. On the pure silver chest plate of his armor, he has "engraved every religious symbol on earth, including the McDonald's logo." Along with his collection of religious relics, Brynner also carries a pair of daggers—silver inlaid with amber and alabaster. Those daggers have particular family meaning and are quite important to the plot of this novel.

     The novel's heroine is Senior BSI Analyst Grace Roberts—Dana Skully to Brynner's Fox Mulder. Grace is a brilliant, no-nonsense scientist who matter-of-factly states that she is a "confirmed atheist and absolute skeptic." She doesn't believe in anything that cannot be proven through tangible evidence. For example, Grace believes that co-orgs exist because she has seen and examined them. She also believes in the existence of the Re-Animus, but, unlike Brynner, she views it as "a force at work. Probably viral, possibly some form of collective organism. Not an evil spirit or demon." Grace keeps the drama of her personal life hidden from everyone at BSI, especially the sad secrets from her past that keep her practically penniless and emotionally spent. 

     During the course of the novel, both Brynner and Grace undergo a gradual evolution in their beliefs about the religious and scientific forces related to the Re-Animus. 

The novel has a small core cast of key characters:

Margaret Bismuth, Director of the Seattle BSI: She is a manipulative manager who has known Brynner and his family for decades. She constantly berates Brynner for his sexually overactive life style and never misses a chance to belittle him with scornful sneers that he'll never measure up to his father's greatness.

Dale Hogman, field team commander of the BSI: He is Brynner's staunch supporter and his contact at Seattle headquarters.

Dr. Alvin Thomas: BSI Head of Analysis: He and Grace stubbornly share the same science-based view of the co-orgs and the Re-Animus.

Emelia and Bran Homer: Brynner's aunt and uncle who raised him after his mother vanished and his father went off to find her. They are salt-of-the-earth, no-nonsense people who have adopted the symbols and ceremonies of multiple faiths to protect themselves against co-org attacks.

Amy Rust (aka Al-ibna Al-habeeba, aka Alifyahmeenyah): A member of the Grave Services, the renowned Egyptian field agents. She arrives just in time to assist in the transport of a captured Re-Animus and stays to befriend and support Brynner and Grace.

Heinrich and Lara Carson: Brynner's parents, whom we meet only in discussions and flashbacks about what ultimately happened to them all those years ago.

                         MY REVIEW                           
    The plot is based on a new development in the long battle between the BSI and the co-orgs. During a battle with a co-org in the hull of a ship in Greece, the corpse begins to speak to Brynner, calling him by name—something that has never ever happened before—not to anyone. It mentions a past encounter with Brynner, so he knows that this is actually a Re-Animus possessing this co-org. Then, the creature gives Brynner a cryptic message: "The old man's body molders, and now she stirs. Give back the heart, Carson. Carson's blood took it, she whispers in dreams. Carson's blood will pay if it isn't returned." After killing the Re-Animus, Brynner finds a blood-written message in hieroglyphics written on the inner hull—a message that Brynner suspects is a curse or a spell. Before long, Brynner and Dale are certain that the heart in question is that of Ra-Ame, an ancient Egyptian goddess who, according to legend, is source of all Re-Animus. But who is "the old man"? What is "she" whispering? And is it Brynner's blood that "will pay"?

     In an attempt to discover where the heart might be located, Bismuth sends Brynner and Grace to the home of his Aunt Emelia, who has sole custody of Heinrich Carson's journals, all written in his own eccentric style of hieroglyphics. Grace is to translate the journals while Brynner protects her from stray co-orgs. Naturally, things get complicated very quickly. Brynner and Grace fight hard against a burgeoning mutual attraction, deal with some co-org battles, and are stunned when the Re-Animus turns up in yet another host corpse—still threatening Brynner and demanding the heart. As the hieroglyphic messages and verbal threats keep coming, Brynner and Grace are forced to work together to defeat the evil that threatens the world.

     Nelson is a great story teller with a vivid imagination, and he tells a compelling tale here. Unfortunately, his plotting skills are not quite strong enough to keep the reader in suspense as to the identity of the ultimate villain. I spotted the Big Bad (as Buffy would say it) and a Minor Bad as soon as they entered the story, so the big twist in the final showdown scene held absolutely no surprises for me—what a disappointment. The lead characters—Brynner and Grace—are well developed, even though they definitely are mirror images of that famous X-Files couple. Their romance builds nicely, with plenty of angst-filled bumps along the way, and the payoff is terrific when they begin to face their personal demons and become stronger as a couple than they are as individuals. It's all about the power of love.

     If it weren't for the too-easy identification of the villains, this would have been a five-star novel, but even with that weakness, Nelson has created a fascinating world with a new and interesting take on the zombie myth. Nelson has stated that he has an outline for a sequel novel, but whether that book ever sees the light of day depends on how well this one sells. So…give this novel a try so that we can find out what's next for our happy-for-now couple. Click HERE to go to the Amazon.com page for The Reburialists where you can click on the cover art to read an excerpt.

                    THE AUTHOR                    
     JC Nelson is the author of the GRIMM AGENCY series from Penguin/Ace. (Click HERE to read my reviews of the GRIMM AGENCY novels.) A former bee keeper and a Texas transplant to the Pacific Northwest, JC works for a large software company building things you’ll never know about if they are working. He can be found by day drinking espresso and writing code, and by night writing books and playing online games badly. With his wife, four children and a flock of chickens, life is never dull. 

     Click HERE to go to Nelson's Facebook page. Click HERE and HERE to read two on-line interviews with J.C. Nelson about The Reburialists. The first interview includes details about Brynner's adoptive grandparents (the Van Helsings) that are not included in the novel.

FULL DISCLOSURE: My review of The Reburialists is based on an electronic advance reading copy (ARC) of the book that I received from the publisher through NetGalley. I received no promotional or monetary rewards, and the opinions in this review are strictly my own.