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. The narrator’s voice, however, is uneven, as Oz often transitions from the mind of a growing adolescent to full adult consciousness in the same paragraph–a minor complaint, though, in an enjoyable tale.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 plot is clearly defined, and the action never flags. The lively narrative will capture the imagination of young teens, especially boys, who will enjoy the more horrifying aspects of the story. Oz, suffering from guilt that he possibly caused Steve’s death, must learn to accept responsibility, not only for his actions in the past, but for the future of civilization as he knows it. Steve’s untimely suicide leaves only the comic books as clues to vanquishing the Takers. Afflicted with Down Syndrome, Steve created new worlds, replete with battles between good and evil, in the comic books that served as his sole refuge from the teasing of Oz and his friends.

Along the way, he learns that his destiny was written by Steve, a boy from his past. In an effort to make things right, he gathers a band of survivors (a baby, an aged mechanic and a talking gorilla, among others), and sets off down his version of the yellow brick road, leading to the Atlanta Zoo. When 13-year-old Osmond â€œOz” Griffith wakes from an illness on the floor of his closet, he discovers the world overrun by man-eating monsters, the Takers, and it’s largely his fault. The first volume in The Oz Chronicles recalls both Stephen King’s The Stand and L.

The Takers by R.W. Ridley