Lessing's latest project, a series entitled Canopus in Argos—Archives, will (if this first volume is any indication) firmly pull together and extend all the most controversial elements of her recent work. Shikasta does not flirt with science-fiction premises, but conspicuously adopts them, much like that remarkable story "Report on the Threatened City." The benevolent civilization of Canopus attempts through a "Forced Growth Plan" to bring a promising bunch of monkeys to "Grade A species" status in less than half the usual 50,000 years. But at a stage apparently corresponding to the early Adamic generations of the Book of Genesis, the evil representatives of another empire cut off the flow of love and intelligence from Canopus and begin wresting the inhabitants of ruined "Shikasta" (Earth) to their own purposes. With terrible pain and difficulty, a few Canopean envoys in successive human incarnations keep the sense of our first destiny fitfully alive through the unspeakable centuries of later history. This material is arranged as a cut-and-paste documentary culled chiefly from Canopean history textbooks and the reports of the emissaries; but the culminating episode—the final mission of "Johor" to free the surviving fragments of humanity after the last cataclysms of the 20th century—is narrated entirely from the viewpoint of the people who know him as the gifted leader George Sherban. In many ways Shikasta is a failure—impatient, flimsy science fiction; much crude historical and political analysis. But at the same time it links up virtually all of Lessing's work since The Four-Gated City (tied to Shikasta by the figure of Lynda Coldridge) as a sustained attempt to point out the coupled mechanisms of derangement and salvation built into human endeavor. And there are passages here—all the more striking for the deliberately disjunctive form of the narrative—which are like miraculous, passionate crystallizations of everything Lessing has ever said about out squandered selves and misconceived hopes. Seeing this stubborn mind returning more elaborately than ever to the theme of transhuman vision, those in quest of illuminating political autobiography or feminist rallying-cries are bound to wonder whether she has become entirely irresponsible. No, this is the same Doris Lessing, grasping even broader moral and political nettles. She has never been more preposterous, more difficult. . . or more worth reading.
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1979
ISBN: 0006547192
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
