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. Light on plot and originality but a charming amusement all the same.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 storyline is also strongly reminiscent of an episode from the bleakly comic Adult Swim cartoon Rick and Morty, which featured a similar contest and stakes-perhaps infused with a dash of Daniel Pinkwater’s Slaves of Spiegel, about an intergalactic cooking competition. Ultraviolet reconcile their differences, survive the plots of their murderously competitive rivals, and manage to sufficiently wow their judges to ensure the survival of humanity? Tune in for your life! Valente’s ( The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home, 2016, etc.) acknowledgements admit she was inspired by the Eurovision Song Contest, David Bowie, and Douglas Adams (many plot elements, the prose style, and the occasionally violent but determined whimsy of it all practically reach peak Adams saturation).

Unfortunately, just about everyone on their shortlist is dead-except for the two surviving members of washed-up glam rock band Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros.

Now it’s Earth’s turn to prove its sentience, with a band personally selected by the galactic alliance known as the Great Octave. Only if a species was judged capable of baring its inner soul musically-that is, if a jury ranked it second-to-last or higher in the Megalactic Grand Prix-would it be permitted to continue existing.

This nearly literal title about an intergalactic battle of the bands is perhaps operatic in scope (in a comic vein, at least) but is more rock than opera.Īfter a devastating interstellar war in which various alien species fought for the right to be considered sentient by all the other species, peace was declared, and everyone agreed on the best way to determine sentience: a song contest.

Space opera catherynne m valente