Gin Phillips

Damn this book made me tense! I was feeling physically ill and nervous, like I was experiencing all the hell written on the page. Fierce Kingdom is about a normal day at the zoo turned nightmare. A mother and her four year old son are enjoying a late afternoon at the zoo when they hear gunfire. Thinking that it must be fireworks or something else they ignore it, but as they're trying to leave they discover dozens of bodies that have been shot down. When the reality hits that there are active show more shooters killing people and animals indiscriminately, Joan goes into flight mode. She has to hide her and her son and keep him quite, but will that be enough? Does she try to help other people or does she only worry about her own child? Can they escape? Where are the police? How can she keep her son from having a meltdown? Fast paced and tense, this book will leave you on the edge of your seat! show less

Joan is spending an afternoon at the zoo with her four-year-old son Lincoln when, just before closing time, she hears a burst of what she only belatedly realizes is gunfire. Then things quickly get nightmarish for her as she finds herself running and hiding, desperately trying to protect herself and her kid.

This isn't a particularly complex or intricate thriller, but it's a nicely effective one. I will admit, I wasn't sure for a while just how well it was going to work for me, as it seems show more quite deliberately designed to play on the fears, instincts, and emotions of parents, which I most definitely am not. And despite Phillips' use of a lot of really wonderful little details that make this woman's relationship with her son and her experience of being his mom feel very real, my own initial feelings were less a distressed "OMG, child in danger! He must be protected!" and more of an annoyed, "Aaargh, this is the problem with little kids: they have no sense of perspective, and even in an actual life-or-death situation, you can't get them to shut up! What a liability!" But Phillips does such a good job of getting into Joan's head, and of building the tension as the story goes along, that even hard-heartedly non-maternal me got sucked into things, so much so that I ended up delaying some important errands just so I could finish the last fifty pages.

Rating: 4.5/5. Because, hey, any book that makes me that unwilling to put it down surely deserves that much. show less

I finished Fierce Kingdom on the same day as the Las Vegas shooting. To read a book about a mass shooting in a zoo on the same day as those horrifying headlines/videos/images hit the news made the story cross from fiction to real life. The questions Joan raises about saving her son versus saving others are ones we should never have to ask ourselves but the likelihood of having to do so increase with every shooting. What a horrible way to live.

Like all tragedies, the story starts out almost show more idyllic. The descriptions of the park where Joan and Lincoln play are beautiful, establishing a lovely connection between mother and son, and providing a calm before the storm. This scene is key for building Lincoln and Joan’s relationship and establishing their personalities. It also provides a fantastic counterpoint to the alone time mother and son will later get.

For the remainder of the novel, tension ratchets as Joan struggles to remain hidden while seeing to the needs of her child. As in any situation where facts are not known, it is fear that drives Joan and determines her action or inaction, fear of the unknown assailants, their whereabouts, and their reasons for the shootings. As she flits from fear to worry to anger and back again, we see her struggle with the situation into which she is forced and watch how her emotions at any given second impact her decision-making. It makes for a fascinating cat-and-mouse scenario, especially because we really only see it from the mouse’s point of view.

Where Fierce Kingdom really impresses is in its morality debates between surviving and saving lives. More than once, Joan must make the toughest of decisions if she hopes to keep her son safe. But as time passes, and it becomes more of a struggle to keep Lincoln quiet, Joan also must confront the choice between her own safety and that of her child. All parents declare they would die for their children, but when faced with that actual life-or-death scenario, would we really do so? For a parent, it does not get much scarier than that, and Ms. Phillips captures the emotional turmoil Joan undergoes with aplomb.

Fierce Kingdom is probably not the novel to read right now. The Vegas shootings are too near to our hearts, involving too many people, and affecting families and friends around the globe. However, it is an important read. Through Joan, readers can wrestle with the same decisions Joan faces. It is almost a fire drill for parents caught in a mass shooting. Schools and places of employment perform lockdown drills regularly to practice for such scenarios. Ms. Phillips provides parents with a similar preparatory exercise in Fierce Kingdom. show less

Fierce Kingdom is awesome, and if you're familiar with my reviews you know I rarely call a book "awesome." It drew me through the pages, and when I got to the last page, holy heck. I've cried at books before, but this is the first time I've ugly-cried.

The whole book was just so real and vivid and it didn't let me fall into the "good guys, bad guys" dichotomy, which would have been very comforting.

I'm going to keep this mini-review obtuse because I don't want to reveal too much, but I'll say show more that I do wonder if I would have reacted so strongly before I had kids...and if I weren't the main character's age and if I didn't go to zoos all over the United States and so have a clear mental picture of just how this might happen in real life. Too much to relate to.

This would make a great movie, but I really hope they don't make one out if it, even though that's probably not fair to Gin Phillips. show less