A smartly executed jumping-off point for new readers in a complex SF saga.
Political and interdimensional challenges confront the Taran Empire in a new series that continues DuBoff’s Cadicle Universe SF saga.
Jason is a scion of the Sietinen Dynasty, which rules the galaxy-spanning Taran Empire. Blessed with telepathic and telekinetic abilities, he works in the Taran Selective Service, headquartered within Earth’s moon. One day he learns that a salvage ship, the Andvari, has been attacked by what appears to be a “transdimensional space kraken.” Worse, the attack happened near the Rift—a “spatial tear” left over from the end of the Bakzen War, 30 years before. Jason’s father, TSS High Commander Wil Sietinen, reveals that the Tarans have been accused of violating an ancient treaty with two alien races—one being the Gatekeepers, the other an unknown quantity. The Tarans don’t know how they violated it, but the Gatekeepers warn that the unknown beings are seeking retribution. Did the malicious, now-deposed Priesthood leave behind clues on Morningstar Isle, their former home, which can help alleviate the crisis? Meanwhile, on the Outer Colony of Duronis, the Sovereign People’s Alliance plans to sow chaos for the ruling family, and Lexi Karis has infiltrated the group to learn the fate of her missing friend, Melisa. DuBoff successfully accomplishes the tricky balancing act of acknowledging the massive Cadicle Universe narrative while also pushing forward into new territory. New readers will definitely feel like they’ve missed a few happenings that comprise the series’ fabric, such as the battle against the Priesthood. Fortunately, for much of the novel’s first half, the most compelling drama remains personal, such as Jason’s breakup with his lover, Tiff. When tragedy eventually strikes, the consequences are immense, as they provide an answer to the adventure’s biggest mystery and bring Earth into the Taran fold. Meanwhile, Raena, Jason’s twin sister who rules Morningstar Isle, weighs in on cultural politics: “There’s such a focus on uniqueness and differences that it’s divided people more than bringing them together.” By the end, a rattled status quo hints at an intriguing sequel.
A smartly executed jumping-off point for new readers in a complex SF saga.Pub Date: March 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-95-434420-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dawnrunner Press
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2021
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
A well-written if elusive treat for fans of modern mythologizing.
In which the Angel of Death really wants to take a holiday.
“Memory is a labyrinth.” Or perhaps a matrix. Actor Reeves teams up with speculative fictionist Miéville to produce a tale that definitely falls into the latter’s “weird fiction” subgenre. The chief protagonist is the demi-divine Unute, known as B. He’s not nice: “That man does not kill children anymore, when he can avoid doing so, but still, leave him alone,” warns one of the narrators, whose threads of story are distinguished by different typefaces. B is a killer—early on, he explains to a psychiatrist, “I kill and kill and kill again,” adding that he’d really rather be doing something else. B is also curious about the way things work, which leads him to experiment on unfortunate deer-pigs, the babirusa of Indonesia, to try to suss out what allows him to die but then come back to life, learning that he’s not so much immortal as “infinitely mortal.” B, as one might imagine, isn’t the life of the party—and the reader will be forgiven for being a little grossed out by his experiments, which are infinitely grisly (“A gush of cream- and rust-colored slime sopped out and across the gurney and onto the floor to mix with soapy water”). The structure of the story is both metaphorical (albeit B professes little patience with metaphor), with Unute morphing into Death itself, and rather loose, the plot picking up hints dropped earlier. It’s not always easy to follow, but it’s clear that Reeves and Miéville are having fun with the tale and its often playful, even poetic language (“the huff-huff of horny hard feet on the scuffed corporate carpet, a stepping closer, an incoming, a meeting about to be”).
A well-written if elusive treat for fans of modern mythologizing.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593446591
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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