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MANY WORLDS

OR, THE SIMULACRA

An intriguing, well-executed collection of SF and paranormal short stories, as varied as the multiverse they inhabit.

Stories about the Simulacra and the humans who live there are told by multiverse travelers, scientists, and ordinary people.

This diverse and vibrant short story collection pivots around the Simulacrum—an entity of an unknown origin that copies the world over and over, making changes along the way. These copies are called the Simulacra. Readers are first introduced to this concept in the tone-setting “Notes on the Form of the Simulacra,” written by co-editor Turnbull and taking the form of posts on an online forum. The researcher collecting these posts believes there may be a way to travel between altered worlds, and the stories that follow allow readers to do just that. They vary from “The Phantom of the Marley Valley High Auditorium for the Performing Arts” by Theodore McCombs, a captivating paranormal mystery about students going missing every year around their school's spring show, to co-editor Eure’s “To the Bottom,” an emotional and intriguing hard SF story about scientists diving to never-before-reached ocean depths. Darkly Lem’s “Blink,” the tale of a person forced to travel between worlds every fifth and seventh blink, and K.W. Onley’s “And So, What Do You Know?” in which two young Black girls are asked to change one thing about their world, are narrative triumphs with no words wasted, elegant and speculative in all the best ways. Psychiatrist Justin C. Key’s “On the Spectrum,” however, may turn off some readers even as it tries to be inclusive. Key seems hopeful that neurotypical readers will empathize with a neurodivergent experience by placing them in a world where they are the “neurodisadvantaged.” But the autism spectrum–coded “Typicals” here are unimaginative, cold, and inflexible, further “othering” them in our own world. Still, each story in this book asks readers to think not just about who they are and what they’d choose, but if they’d even want the choice—questions worth pondering long after the book is finished.

An intriguing, well-executed collection of SF and paranormal short stories, as varied as the multiverse they inhabit.

Pub Date: June 13, 2023

ISBN: 9781737718437

Page Count: 180

Publisher: Radix Media

Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023

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IRON FLAME

From the Empyrean series , Vol. 2

Unrelenting, and not in a good way.

A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.

Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.

Unrelenting, and not in a good way.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023

ISBN: 9781649374172

Page Count: 640

Publisher: Red Tower

Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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

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