A complex and intriguing series entry.
A skilled operative finds herself in a new world and must protect its denizens from her own mortal enemies in the third book in Cox’s SF series, following Shadowsphere (2022).
Malidora is the last agent of the Sinavus, an organization that controlled her home world of Isodonia with manipulation and violence. Her traumatic past has taught her she’s dangerous to anyone who grows close to her. On Isodonia, the Shadows invaded and manipulated her to kill her own family. After she defeated a particularly strong Shadow, she was brought into the mindstream, where stronger beings lurk. She escaped and found herself in the Hollow—a universe between worlds—and learned the truth of the Gaith, cosmic gods who intend to destroy her world and others like it. She learns to harness her own energy but barely escapes with her life into the world of Kandom, where the land is split into light and dark areas, with warring peoples on either side. She meets the handsome, strong, and wary Dabradan, a soldier for the light side who takes her prisoner to help him investigate unusual animal attacks. By Dabradan’s side is Evala, a rebellious, perceptive orphan with the ability to detect lies. Malidora quickly realizes the Shadows have arrived in Kandom, and if her new companions don’t heed her warnings, their people won’t survive. Cox returns to the Bewilderness series with a vibrant third installment that will thrill and surprise returning readers. Malidora is a refreshing, confident, and entertaining main character who effectively drives the story and has compelling relationships with other players. Her reaction to and decision in the Hollow are particularly powerful and provide an engaging foundation to her interactions with the people of Kandom. Her curiosity effectively introduces elements of Cox’s intricate worldbuilding, as when Evala explains the light and darkness of her home planet: “Kandom is tidally locked. We always face the sun, just like Underveil is always in the dark, facing away from it.” After an ending that’s both harrowing and heartwarming, fans will eagerly await the next installment.
A complex and intriguing series entry.Pub Date: May 15, 2023
ISBN: 9798986636849
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Silvettica
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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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