All setup with no payoff.
A teenage girl’s mysterious dreams suggest her past isn’t what she remembers.
Infinity “Finn” Blackstone’s the daughter of Richard Blackstone, owner of Blackstone Technologies, the most powerful and advanced technology company in the world, but she doesn’t even know her brilliant but reclusive father. After a life without dreaming, she suddenly starts dreaming exact memories, reliving days that really happened—but the dreams end up including disturbing twists that feel real. In between the flashback dream sequences, Finn attends a ritzy private school populated by cardboard mean girls and jerks and where she vies mildly with her best friend over the romantic attentions of a handsome new bad-boy transfer student. The school rewards top performers with a field trip, and this year it is to Blackstone’s facility—meaning Finn might get a chance to see her father. The present-day action doesn’t begin in earnest until very late in the book. In order for the action sequences to go forward, however, adult characters must make what appear to be bafflingly, implausibly bad decisions. The lack of subtlety in the foreshadowing prevents any twists from surprising. The ending aims for cliffhanger but comes across as abruptly incomplete—although some of the yet-to-be addressed questions might ultimately match the promise of the futuristic, corporate-oligarchy owned world.
All setup with no payoff. (Science fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5039-4507-4
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Skyscape
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
($24.00; Feb.; 240 pp.; 0-06-105118-7): What can possibly beat space hero Jim Endicott's previous adventures? In Step Into Chaos (1999), and its predecessors, he killed his father, got killed himself, then was resurrected and transformed into a godlike entity, the Omega Point. But since god-Jim went back in time to alter his own past and unkill his father, that all happened in another universe. So now there are two Jims in two universes undergoing different trials and adventures. Will they meet? Stick with Shatner's latest interminable series and you'll find out - probably - eventually….
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-105118-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
paper 0-15-600552-2 The 1996 awards, as voted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Esther M. Friesner (“A Birthday”) carried off the Best Short Story Award for the second year running; Bruce Holland Rogers captured the Best Novella Award with “Lifeboat on a Burning Sea”; and editor Dann’s “Da Vinci Rising,” a spinoff from his alternate-world novel The Memory Cathedral (1995), claimed Best Novelette. Best Novel winner Nicola Griffith (Slow River) is represented by her 1995 novella finalist, “Yaguara.” Finalists Harry Turtledove, Dean Wesley Smith, Paul Levinson, and Jonathan Lethem also appear, as do Rhysling Award (poetry) winners Marge Simon and Bruce Boston. “The Men Return” represents Grand Master winner Jack Vance, while Robert Silverberg and Terry Dowling sing his praises. Bill Warren heroically watched all the year’s movies. Also, nonfictionally, Lucius Shepard gloomily records the death of literary science fiction; Norman Spinrad gets hissy about authors who rent out their creations (“evil stuff”); and Elizabeth Hand growls that fiction itself has become “a barrio of the entertainment industry.” Keith Ferrell tracks sf via the Web; Robert Frazier recites sf poetry; Ian Watson keeps a stiff British upper lip; and cobbers Terry Dowling and Sean McMullan do Australia. Read. Enjoy. Just don’t mention “franchising” if Norman Spinrad’s within earshot.
Pub Date: April 17, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-100306-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
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