An entertaining read that doesn’t add anything fresh to the slow-ships-to-the-stars-are-doomed canon.
The spaceship Voyager (no, not that one) faces threats from within and without as it finally nears its destination.
After 253 years, the titular ship is approaching the planet Promissa, but most of the probes seeking information about this potential home go offline before they can report back. Is something—or someone—interfering with the ship’s research? And the news that their goal is imminent catalyzes a growing unrest in the ship’s population, who chafe at the rigid strictures of the ship’s charter, which effectively locks an individual into the same work division until they submit to mandatory recycling at age 75. The autocratic governor; an overzealous cop; a farmer turned unwillingly into opposition leader; a scientist excited and worried by the limited data they’re receiving from Promissa; and a young hacker with an uncanny ability to infiltrate the ship’s systems all play roles in determining the future of Voyager’s inhabitants even as politics and competing ambitions threaten to bungle the colonization process. SF has produced many stories suggesting that the centuries-long mission of a ship traveling from Earth to a new home is unlikely to meet with success. Mammay primarily addresses the conflicts among the ship's inhabitants; while emphasizing that human frailty may overcome good intentions and careful research, this choice also means that some of the intriguing aspects of landing on the new planet don’t get all the attention they deserve. As a result, the pacing feels a bit distorted: a slow burn and then a rush to climax. That focus also highlights the implausibility of the societal organization on the ship. Determining a person’s job at an early age and not allowing them to switch, with all major decisions made primarily by the governor and the captain and then by division directors, is not a viable structure for a journey that takes generations. The absence of representative democracy means that corruption and stagnancy are bound to occur; it’s shocking that this kind of upheaval didn’t happen considerably earlier in the voyage. It might be interesting to contrast this work with Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora (2015), a more accomplished generation-ship novel in which the ship lacked a clear leader and ran into its own problems.
An entertaining read that doesn’t add anything fresh to the slow-ships-to-the-stars-are-doomed canon.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063252981
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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