An indelible introduction to an interplanetary saga and its sublime characters.
A 22nd-century cop’s search for his missing sister on Mars entangles him in a conspiracy in this SF series opener.
Crucial Larsen opted to stay on Earth while his younger sister, Essential, took a job on colonized yet not fully terraformed Mars. But the cop braves dreaded space travel upon learning that Essential has disappeared. Things get instantly awkward on the red planet, as his initial contact is Mars’ deputy chief of security, Jynks Martine. Jynks is engaged to Crucial’s botanist ex-girlfriend, Melinda “Mel” Hopwire. But there’s a general sense of unease on both Mars and Earth, as citizens are somehow armed in defiance of the advanced artificial intelligence Halo that monitors the two planets. Complicating matters are the governing Five Families. Years ago, the Consolidation Wars whittled corporation-owning families down to five, but there may be dissension among them once again. Trying to find his sister puts Crucial near the Variance, a resistance group that opposes the Five Families. The Variance has a plan underway that includes subverting ostensibly omniscient Halo. As Crucial is immersed in this scheme, whether he likes it or not, the generally indifferent, law-enforcing “Earther” will have to choose which side he’s on. McFall and Hays flavor this SF tale with noir: Halo is interrogating Crucial, the world-weary detective (of sorts), as the story unfolds in flashbacks. This style is effective in multiple ways, especially as it playfully teases future narrative events, like certain characters’ fates. Smartly detailed SF components are equally strong: Glitter guns grow and discharge crystal ammo while lowly Earth’s backstory is rife with global devastation. The cast, meanwhile, is predominantly and refreshingly female, and many, from Jynks to Singhroy Able (from one of the Five Families), are delightfully vague regarding their motivations. Though a sequel will follow, the ending offers considerable resolution.
An indelible introduction to an interplanetary saga and its sublime characters.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73451-970-9
Page Count: 303
Publisher: Pumpjack Press
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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