An elaborate, futuristic tale that will draw in new readers with its keen characterization.
In the second installment of Lefave’s (The Epoch of Redress, 2017) sci-fi series, twins try to prevent the extermination of a people blamed for child abductions and a viral epidemic.
It’s been a year since Gadlin siblings Elize and Keeto took refuge at Schrödinger University as a student and employee, respectively. They had feared that their father would send Elize away because she had symptoms that were similar to their institutionalized mother’s. Those symptoms disappeared for a while, but Elize recently began hearing voices again and suffering memory lapses. Now the city of Eadonberg is plagued by a virus and a rash of child kidnappings, and the Unification government’s oppressive Ministry holds the Gadlin race accountable for both. The twins respond by joining their half-Gadlin pal Stitch’s underground network to spy on the Ministry. Later, Stitch’s Gadlin mentor Odwin mysteriously disappears. An enigmatic woman named Nepharisse also dabbles in espionage; as a member of Global Health Unit’s catering staff, she gets close to Sothese, the personal adviser to the Pramam, who heads the Unification. Nepharisse, who has a unique method of killing (when necessary), believes that the twins are “chosen ones,” and she wants the same thing that they do: to stop the Pramam from committing genocide. Reading Lefave’s preceding novel isn’t mandatory before reading this one, but it does enhance the experience; for example, the references to Caroline, an essential character in the earlier story, will become much more meaningful. There’s a plethora of strange happenings in this installment, such as the fact that a curious red-granite rock, which Elize retrieved from a murder victim, keeps turning up in her pocket. Some questions also linger from the first volume, particularly regarding the twins’ mysterious father, who has ties to the Pramam. Lefave’s prose remains strong; one particular highlight is when Elize peruses Keeto’s journal, skipping the boring parts and adding her own commentary.
An elaborate, futuristic tale that will draw in new readers with its keen characterization.Pub Date: July 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-988814-01-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Aguacene Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2017
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
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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