An inventive, thoughtful space adventure about the nature of purpose and community.
In Chouinard’s SF novel, a group of children come of age without adults.
Pee-pop has lived her entire life—nearly 10 years—inside a self-sufficient POD spaceship shooting through the galaxy at interstellar speed. Pee-pop is the de facto leader of the crew of 10 cadets, all of whom have been on the ship since they were literal zygotes. The cadets all have names like Chee-chaw, Plashy, Chop-char, and Dee-dore, and—like the seven dwarves—each has a distinguishing attribute (funny, smart, strong, creative). They all get along, except for Potch, whose descriptor could well be malcontented: “Like the rest of his compatriots, he didn’t choose this life. But unlike the rest of them, he had never accepted it either, and pretty much right from the beginning. Earth was a long way behind them—far longer than their own lifespans, should they ever desire to turn back.” When the cadets’ 10th birthday arrives, the ship’s intelligent operating system, ABRAM (Automated Biological Replication Assistance Machine), reveals something big. As part of the Human Dispersal Project, they—like numerous other PODs—were scattered to the stars in the hopes of spreading human life to distant planets. The planet they’re headed for is called ESUP-9, orbiting Alpha Centauri B. The cadets are now old enough to have access to the Anthropological Records Collection, a trove of information about humankind and its history. The new information astounds the crew, particularly Pee-pop, who feels great responsibility for her fellow cadets, and Potch, who feels more than ever that he’s trapped. In addition, both characters feel like some aspect of the mission remains hidden from them. Can these 10 children and their AI chaperone continue to grow collectively as they speed toward their future? Or will the inherent flaws of their species—fear, paranoia, selfishness—unmake them before they reach their ultimate home?
Chouinard writes kids well; one of the joys of the novel is seeing the microculture the cadets have built for themselves. The hard SF elements are crafted with exceptional detail and verisimilitude. The story is a slow burn, but the author’s prose adeptly massages the tension just enough to keep readers engaged, as here, when Pee-pop watches Potch: “She couldn’t break past that impenetrable shroud he had carried around with him his entire life. He was here. He was helping. But that didn’t undo months of sneaking around, storing secrets in a journal meant for no one’s eyes but his, doing who-knows-what as he snooped around the system.” The book is appended by 50 pages of post-narrative text, which mostly covers the author’s inspiration and writing process (revealing, for example, how many of the character names are drawn from his son’s imaginary friends). Even without this addition, however, the book feels slightly overlong. This is partly due to the general sluggishness of the plot, and partly to the fact that, while the book is not meant for children, it is very much about children. Nevertheless, fans of thoughtful SF will find much here to ponder.
An inventive, thoughtful space adventure about the nature of purpose and community.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781735167909
Page Count: 431
Publisher: Proavia Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. 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. 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. 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. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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