A brisk SF novel with a richly described setting that should be able to sustain a series.
Weisbeck’s speculative series starter introduces a divided future world ravaged by a pandemic.
Mercy Perching is a leading scientist in the Sanctuary of Europe, studying the FossilFlu, a disease that’s wiped out much of the planet’s population. At Europe’s Council of Leaders, she’s surprised to find Europe isn’t the only Sanctuary; there’s also the Sanctuary of Asia and the Sanctuary of Americas. In the latter, scientists have encountered a mutation of the FossilFlu that’s dangerous to both humans and animals. Mercy is sent to work with their scientists on a cure. Once there, she finds a completely different world where science has solved many problems that Europe has yet to conquer. The Americas have built a shield to protect them from the harsh environment; and unlike Europe, they have live vegetation—and their people can go outside. They also have human/animal hybrids called Chimera and a tense political debate about how the hybrids fit into society—a rift their leader, the Prime, says she’s trying to heal. Mercy becomes involved with Chase, a fellow scientist and dog/human hybrid, and finds that the mutations have political origins. This puts her, her research, and her new relationship with Chase in the middle of a burgeoning civil war, which kicks off the rest of the series. In this first book, Weisbeck has created a colorful future and populated it with a variety of distinct creatures, and she ably expands and deepens the worldbuilding as the book goes on. Indeed, the vivid atmosphere is the book’s greatest asset and should please SF fans; it also gives Weisbeck a solid foundation for future installments. There are a few minor flaws, including plot elements that could have been better fleshed out; for instance, Sen. Arjun is an avatar of the Purists, an anti-Chimera political group, who’s apparently meant to be a foil for the Prime, but so little time is devoted to him and his group that they feel like afterthoughts. The story zips along, but there’s occasionally clumsy prose, as when a whale is said to move with “brevity.”
A brisk SF novel with a richly described setting that should be able to sustain a series.Pub Date: June 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5272-6150-1
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A ridiculous concept imbued with gravity, charm, humor, plausible cynicism, and pathos—and perhaps the merest touch of spite.
A Wallace & Gromit dream is more of a nightmare in this darkly farcical science fantasy in which the moon inexplicably becomes…well, not green, but decidedly dairy.
When the moon and every lunar sample on Earth transform into a cheese-like substance, it seems amusing at first, but the appearance of this newly organic, extremely unstable satellite has far-reaching, apocalyptic consequences. A variety of U.S. citizens—disappointed astronauts from newly cancelled lunar missions, scientists whose understanding of the universe has been entirely upended, writers frantically adapting their pitches, retirees at a rural diner finding solace in their friendship, a small church community looking for divine answers, bickering cheese-shop owners whose product gets both welcome and unwelcome attention, the ultra-wealthy owner of an aerospace company with a spectacularly self-involved agenda, bank executives seeking a financial angle, and government officials desperately scheduling press conferences—respond in ways grand and petty, generous and self-serving. Those responses can only escalate when a cheesy lunar fragment threatens to destroy all life on our planet. Scalzi’s premise is absurd, but it’s merely the pretext to take a multifaceted, satiric look at how Americans deal with large-scale crisis, something we’re abundantly and recently familiar with, and will no doubt experience again in the not-so-distant future. He writes of denial, conspiracy theories, anger directed at the wrong people, unscrupulous political machinations, and multiple attempts at profiting from the end of the world, for as long as it lasts. There are moments of unexpected kindness and generosity, too. Of course, Scalzi takes aim at his favorite corporate, social, and government targets, as well as at the cheap sentiment that crisis always seems to inspire (as exemplified by a catastrophic Saturday Night Live episode).
A ridiculous concept imbued with gravity, charm, humor, plausible cynicism, and pathos—and perhaps the merest touch of spite.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780765389091
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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
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