A visionary SF novel that captures the emotional toll of our imperfect, tech-reliant world.
Two traders get more than they bargained for on a trip into the wasteland in Cooke’s dystopian SF novel.
Jane lives in the city of Chiru on a planet orbiting two suns—one real and dying, the other artificial and on the fritz. Like everyone else in Chiru, her body is regulated by her chonin, the government-provided AI microchip embedded in her wrist that’s supposed to make life easier (though really, like the artificial sun, it is prone to malfunction). Chonins are Jane’s business at the moment: She and her partner, Parker West, have been hired to transport a load of them to the remote Outer Territories—a dangerous but potentially lucrative job. “Jane’s considerable debt had grown over the years and this was one of the few ways to earn some additional credits during the long and nasty recessionary period,” the narrator states matter-of-factly. “Parker would follow Jane anywhere but he was growing worried about the whole venture.” With a robot named TennTenn, the couple sets out onto the rugged terrain hoping for a big score. Deep in the wastes they meet Arum Bell, an inventor with a complicated past, and Jane begins to learn things about her world—and herself—that she never could have imagined. Cooke’s vivid prose renders the novel’s otherworldly landscapes in glittering detail: “The surface of the true sun cast a projection of highly energized particles outward. The sand around them darkened. Electrifying blues, greens and violets dressed up the naked sky in a different type of light seldom seen within the decontaminated area.” The characters are all fairly stock, but the author manages to make the world of Chiru and the Outer Territories feel fresh. The book’s greatest pleasure is the way the SF flourishes blend with its western plot to form a wonderfully melancholic bit of climate fiction. This is one apocalypse the reader won’t want to see end.
A visionary SF novel that captures the emotional toll of our imperfect, tech-reliant world.Pub Date: June 16, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
Gripping.
An executioner guards her emotions and her heart in this thrilling series opener that returns to the dystopian world of Mafi’s bestselling Shatter Me series.
Twenty-year-old Rosabelle Wolff lives a meager existence, exiled on Ark Island, the site of what remains of The Reestablishment’s totalitarian state. She scrapes by, working as a contract killer in order to keep Clara, her ailing younger sister, alive. Rosabelle’s stoicism is her defense against the invasive technology that feeds The Reestablishment’s ever-watching “omnipotent, synthetic brain.” With her sister’s survival in jeopardy, Rosabelle consents to a mission that sends her after James Anderson. James was 11 when his elder brother led the resistance that overthrew The Reestablishment, which their father cofounded. More than 10 years later, James is determined to do what his brother couldn’t—infiltrate Ark Island, the regime’s “last refuge,” to uncover its secrets. Rosabelle wrestles with her emotions, torn between her duty to her sister, her hatred of the government, and her growing attraction to James. Mafi incorporates surveillance and artificial intelligence into her realistically drawn world that’s filled with political intrigue. Rosabelle’s and James’ alternating first-person narration fills in the backstory for new readers. The balance between the suspense and dramatic action sequences feels cinematic, and the slow-burn romance shimmers beneath the darker, trauma-tinged themes of mental health, sinister applications of biotechnology, and food insecurity. The leads are cued white, and there’s ethnic diversity among the supporting characters.
Gripping. (Dystopian. 14-adult)Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063419001
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Storytide/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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