Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wilson (Robopocalypse) draws on his Cherokee heritage to meld Native American and scientific knowledge into a stunning phantasmagoric first contact tale. When an encounter with deep-space Voyager crafts triggers an alien probe to race toward Earth, a long-dormant alien mechanism on the planet awakens and begins to bring its dreams to life, alerting a handful of sensitive people to its existence. Gavin Clark, chasing UFO reports, links up with NASA scientist Mikayla Johnson, who deciphers the alien probe signal as a series of human voices shrieking. Meanwhile oil field worker Jim Hardgray, while trying to reunite with his estranged daughter, Tawny, begins to see visions of his Cherokee ancestors and to wonder if the burial mound near his single-wide trailer is as charged with spirits as his mother-in-law warned. Wilson neatly entangles the most modern tech, like quantum computers that accurately foretell the future, with ancient beliefs that retain enough power to motivate contemporary folks. Like the best X-Files episodes, this story uses the alien character to bring out the human elements in vivid detail. It's a masterful feat. Agent: Laurie Fox, Linda Chester Agency. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
This mind-blowing novel describes an encounter between a unique scientist, a paranormal algorithm, an investigator of unidentified anomalous phenomena, and an Indigenous man struggling with loss. When a first-contact event is predicted, followed by confirmed reports of a spacecraft heading toward Earth, these disparate elements come together at the Spiro Mounds complex in western Oklahoma, where the spacecraft will touch down. At the last moment, the visitor hangs in the air and then melts into the ancient site, leaving the onlookers mystified. Mikayla, the NASA scientist, wearing AI assistive technology, arrives at the site and encounters Brian the investigator, along with Jim Hardgray and his daughter Tawny. They enter the tunnels beneath the mound complex, where they slowly realize, through a series of paranormal events, that the visitors are the original inhabitants of Earth, and their return does not bode well for humanity. The military mobilizes against the invaders, but the aliens feed on consciousness and will cause a veritable living hell on Earth for all sentient beings if they are not stopped. VERDICT Wilson's (The Clockwork Dynasty) suspenseful, adrenaline-filled adventure will keep readers engaged and guessing to the end.--Henry Bankhead
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
First contact with an extraterrestrial entity comes to Mother Earth via her First People. Wilsonis no stranger to big-thinking epistolary SF epics. Here, armed with a few novel entry points into an old horror story (à laThe Thing), he turns his attention to an alien invader way more frightening than a microbe. To get the dubious bits out of the way, the U.S. government accidentally created an AI that can accurately predict the future, every time, but only via hard-to-interpret poetry, comprehensible only by the grad student whose brain provided its template. Known as "the Man Downstairs," this reluctant guru discovers a large anomaly at the heliopause, the very edge of known space, and it's heading this way. Meanwhile, NASA engineer Mikayla Johnson has discovered her own anomaly via the custom augmented reality glasses she wears to combat her extreme social anxiety--they're not only learning on their own, but talking to her, warning that something is coming. Gavin Clark, a military man tasked with neutralizing new weapon technology, ably fills the role of both government spook and shoot-first skeptic with clipped precision. Finally, Wilson adds a lot of heart in Jim Hardgray, a Cherokee electrician with a year of sobriety under his belt and plenty to make up for, not least to his 13-year-old daughter, Tawny. As inRobopocalypse (2011), the story is presented via each character's first-person narration, which adds some interesting fragmentation later on as characters transform over a few desperate hours. As the unknown entity makes a beeline for the famous Native American burial mounds in Spiro, Oklahoma, Wilson stitches together a prescription bottle's worth of nightmarish images, invasive biotechnology, and Indigenous cosmology. What remains is a ticking clock scenario that gets more and more unhinged (and occasionally unclear) as it counts down and our strange quintet faces the music of the spheres. Less spectacle than a robot uprising but deeper, weirder, and harder to shake off. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
