October 1, 2023
Sheriff David Blunt never expected much to happen in his rural Nebraska community, full of people he had known since he was a boy, and he liked it that way. That all changed when an asteroid hurtling toward Earth turned out to be a gigantic alien corpse that landed on the outskirts of his small town. Two years later, the arrival of this giant has transformed Little Springs into a booming metropolis with a military base, a science lab, tourist attractions, and a doomsday cult. Tensions between locals and "outsiders" are already at a fever pitch when people begin dying under mysterious circumstances. As David's investigation points toward a connection with the giant, he falls deeper into the secretive world of the government agencies tasked with studying the alien. He is also forced to come to terms with his town's permanent alteration and confront his own biases against those who are now under his protection. Atmospheric imagery and heartfelt characterization bring Jensen's (Arca) beautiful and strange world to life. VERDICT A gripping, fast-paced, genre-bending novel full of heart and wonder. Give this one to fans of Ben H. Winters and Dan Chaon.--Portia Kapraun
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 18, 2023
In the clever but crammed sci-fi debut from graphic novelist Jensen (Arca), Nebraskan sheriff David Blunt investigates a series of brutal murders tied to a giant alien carcass nicknamed Gulliver that has recently crashed to Earth on the outskirts of town. When David finds his cousin Jason dead with strange markings carved into his flesh in the same pattern as those on Gulliver, he plunges into a comic-book world of action and weirdness, infiltrating a cult that worships Gulliver and discovering that the U.S. military commander in charge of security around the crash site is selling Gulliver’s crystalline secretions as a hallucinogen to cult members who claim it allows them to see God. Another of Gulliver’s curious side effects: the town’s Alzheimer’s patients, among them David’s grandfather, regain lucidness for two minutes every evening, allowing David a window into his family history, including his parents’ deaths in a tornado and what drove away his long-lost cousin, who he knew as Ben. This cousin, a transgender woman now going by Charlotte, returns to town as a TV reporter—and David vows to protect her from the killer who’s still on the loose. Jensen has a knack for page-turning car chases, shoot-outs, and bar fights, and he lovingly captures the Nebraskan prairie, but the narrative is bloated with fizzling subplots. Readers will initially be wowed, but the story can’t sustain its swagger.