Preposterous plotting, laughably bad prose: “As I reformed, refinements added to my body and mind like translucent layers of...
The seventh volume in Asaro’s Skolian space opera has less sex and sadism than previous outings (The Quantum Rose, 2000, etc.) as Dyhianna Selei, a telepathic psychic-webmaster and Pharaoh of the Ruby Dynasty, brokers an uncertain peace with the vile, slave-keeping Aristo Traders. The Radiance War has ended with the galaxy of human-inhabited planets more or less in tatters and both the Skolians and Traders claiming victory. The titular heads of both empires are dead, with rivals lining up to continue hostilities, when Dyhianna literally appears out of thin air on a planet inhabited by humans who look like walking trees. Exactly how she got to this planet she can barely remember–just as the Traders were about to annihilate her family, she, with her husband Prince Eldrin and son Taquinil, somehow transformed themselves into “Kyle space” and escaped into the psychic-Internet that Dyhianna, who is also a genius mathematician, invented. After a tree man almost rapes her (but gives up because he has a kind heart), Dyhianna eludes a pack of torture-hungry Trader soldiers by vomiting on them. She makes her presence known and is whisked away to a Skolian battle cruiser, where she discovers that the psychic-Internet no longer exists, but that the Traders possess her husband, whose psychic abilities, when combined with an ancient device called a Lock, might give the Traders supremacy. Then Dyhianna notices that her ex-husband, Seth Rockworth, living on Earth, has been taking care of a peculiar bunch of kids whose features suggest that they may be offspring of the dead Skolian Imperator Sauscony “Soz” Lahaylia and the Trader Emperor Jaibriol Qox. Can Dyhianna get these kids, one of whom appears to have already assumed power over Traders, to make love, not war?
Preposterous plotting, laughably bad prose: “As I reformed, refinements added to my body and mind like translucent layers of watercolor paint laid over a picture.” For fans only.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-89063-X
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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