An entertaining dystopian tale about technology that persistently walls off people from life and connection.
Teens fight the power that’s putting defective chips in their heads in this techno-thriller.
Scott imagines a near-future America where most homicides have been suppressed by a program called Bee Sting, which implants in people’s heads computer chips that will murder them if they kill someone, even in self-defense. The upshot is an apartheid state overseen by the government’s powerful Chip Integration Division. “Disconnected” people who refuse to have their chips activated at the age of 15 are banned from shops, businesses, and transportation and are usually sent to labor camps. Unwillingly thrust into that plight are some teens in the California town of Ridge Crest, including Talon Russit, whose chip proves unable to run Bee Sting, and his soul mate, Sofia Abreo. Sofia’s chip develops spotty connections to the network. After his policeman dad dies attempting to free him from CID custody, Talon lands in the Fabrication Center, a prison where inmates make chip gadgetry. There, he’s cruelly abused by the warden, who makes him sleep outside in searing weather, and the inmates, who beat him. But he also develops an ability to evade chip readers and computerized locks to open secured doors. Meanwhile, Sofia is immured in the Tech Lab, where she polishes her skill at circumventing security systems. Sofia hopes to rescue Talon with the help of his disconnected older brother, Wilder, legendary as a high-tech break-in artist. But Talon is targeted by Gen. Stafford, a CID official who wants to exploit his door-opening prowess, and by the Fabrication Center’s warden, who recruits psychotic inmate Letcher Mercer to murder the teen. Scott’s labyrinthine SF yarn effectively magnifies paranoia about a total surveillance state as well as the universal experience of frustration at inscrutable digital devices that unaccountably stop working. His tough but subtle prose ably conveys quiet, intense psychological conflict. (“Letcher took a step closer to the glass, leering down at the warden. The warden decided a chair would be a nice touch after all. ‘You do know I could gas you, right?’ Letcher allowed a crooked grin to belie his usual demeanor, acknowledging what they both knew—the warden was frightened.”) The result is an absorbing story about a brave new world of stifling safety that virtually eradicates freedom.
An entertaining dystopian tale about technology that persistently walls off people from life and connection.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 265
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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