A gripping SF tale that explores themes of humanity and loyalty.
In Erickson’s SF novel, a young woman who’s lost everything is forced into service investigating a Martian colony that’s seemingly vanished.
In the futuristic Third Republic of 2126, the world is ordered by castes, including high-ranking “patricians” (who “live longer, disease-free, and bring order through racial purity”), subservient “plebians,” and lowly “surfers” and slaves. When patrician Cassandra “Cassie” IX is convicted of sharing black market books and ideas with the lower classes, she’s stripped of her social status, titles, and internal AI program (named Aletheia). After 18 months in prison, Cassie is informed by Captain Willard Bennett and Lieutenants Richard and Rommel that she’s been conscripted to the Earth Navy light cruiser Jefferson Davis on a mission to Mars to investigate why all communication from the Martian colony of New Georgia has gone dark. Cassie has been chosen specifically because, alongside images of severed heads on spikes and other carnage, reconnaissance teams on Mars found a message made using rocks: “Bring Cassandra Kurtz.” As her group investigates the seemingly abandoned colony—and Cassie attempts to fend off a forced betrothal to Rommel, who stands to make great financial gains from the marriage whether Cassie actually survives the mission or not—they discover increasingly disturbing evidence of scientific experiments and clues about the decades-long disappearances of various slaves, plebeians, and surfers. After Cassie is once again summoned (this time in blood) by the planet’s hidden inhabitants, the group finally comes across two: “Both were naked, with different straps and belts holding various things, but most conspicuous were their weapons, edge weapons at various lengths, and each shouldered an old-style semiautomatic rifle with clips expertly placed along their midline for fast deployment.” This interaction leads to Cassie making a choice about her future that will also affect the very foundations of society all the way back on Earth.
Based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness(1899), Erickson’s space yarn doesn’t shy away from carrying on the themes and imagery of its source material. Instead of the Congo, however, Cassie lives in a world where “the sun—or rather, the center of the glow that could be the sun—was scattered in the smoke and other pollutants from global fires, industry, and just runaway greenhouse heating.” This dystopia, in which racism and slavery prevail not just on Earth but throughout the galaxy, is packed with vivid details and rare instances of humor (usually in the form of Aletheia’s quips). Some material may be triggering to readers, including the use of a racial epithet and a scene in which an inmate urges Cassie to kill herself. While the majority of the characters are fully fleshed out, Cassie’s personal evolution clearly makes her a standout as her growing knowledge of the way the worlds (both Earth and Mars) work begins to shape her evolution from a woman who wants to do the right thing into a woman who defies an entire planet. Cassie’s explanation for the explorers’ downfall (“Madness killed them. Weakness killed them. The heavy weight of darkness killed them”) manages to be simultaneously eerie and inspirational—a fitting achievement for a book that unflinchingly explores the depths of human depravity.
A gripping SF tale that explores themes of humanity and loyalty.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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