A futuristic space opera with an overwhelming plot but engaging talk.
In Corwin’s SF novel, Earth is under attack—and our heroes aren’t sure they’re the good guys.
In the year 2140, far out in space, Lieutenant Janet “Cat” Miles and her crewmates check the room where they had placed the body of their dead commander, Jason Cody, only to find it missing. As they investigate the now-empty room, a star map appears, showing the Laniakea cluster of galaxies (including the Milky Way) and the words “Time is running out.” The map disappears, leaving the crew even more confused than before, with no body, no map, and no clue as to what it all means. Soon after, a religious leader from Earth named Frane Paxton manages to contact the ship, informing the crew about a blockade around Earth set by unknown assailants and requesting their aid. Paxton asks them to send one of the crewmembers to Earth, alone and cloaked, to assess the situation and find a way to save the planet. Cat is assigned to the mission, but the lonely journey to Earth leaves her questioning her humanity. Back on the ship, Cat’s crewmates discover that records of Cat’s medical examinations have gone missing and that she interrogated prisoners without any backup or security in sessions that ended in bloodshed. How is the crew supposed to save Earth from an unknown enemy when they can’t even trust each other? This expansive SF novel is a direct sequel to the author’s The Optical Lasso (2019), and readers are advised to read the books in order, since much of this novel’s story will be confusing without the necessary background knowledge. Corwin weaves an intricate web of human, alien, and robotic constructs, and it’s not always clear who the good and bad guys really are. While some aspects of the complex narrative may be confusing or tough to follow, the author excels at banter between friendly characters (“‘Don’t you find all this very interesting, Miss Miles.’ Cat countered with a long cold stare, ‘Are you attempting to channel your inner Sergeant Schultz, doctor?’”), and dialogue in general.
A futuristic space opera with an overwhelming plot but engaging talk.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9798872593584
Page Count: 480
Publisher: The Moving Words
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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