A subtle and meaningful collection about humankind under stress.
Dystopian futures reveal the universality of primal human emotions in this SF story collection.
Each story in this anthology focuses on people grappling with the consequences of intense emotions. Highlights include “Terror,” in which a father and son living in a subterranean city win a lottery to join a group of citizens headed aboveground to prepare Earth for repopulation. According to their leaders, “the Terror,” defined as having “sharpened pointed” teeth and “catlike” eyes, live on the surface. As part of their pre-ascent orientation, the citizens view frightening images from the past. The leaders manipulate them through the use of special effects (“thunder rolled around the room, so that the very benches they sat on trembled”) so that they’ll uncritically accept the mission. In “Despair,” Skazi, a gambling addict and prisoner, awakens in corporate psychiatric facility Trans-Con, which rehabilitates mentally ill persons by shifting “the consciousness of patients…to primates and returning it back.” It turns out that participation in the program is mandatory, and noncompliance of any kind results in enslavement and exile to another planet for life. A clear concern for humanity, reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian fiction, appears throughout all of Falconer’s stories here; their characters start out as victims of their unique situations, as one might expect, but they’re also at the mercy of their own individual flaws, as well. As if to accent the theme of humanity, the stories all distinctively open with the protagonist encountering a specific smell, such as “garlic,” “perfumed floral air,” “roasting coffee beans, “freshly cut grass,” or “sweat, linen, plastic.” Moreover, they all struggle against greater societies where humanity—as a group and as a state of existence—has been diminished, giving the tales an unmistakable feeling of profundity.
A subtle and meaningful collection about humankind under stress.Pub Date: July 28, 2021
ISBN: 979-8545048656
Page Count: 223
Publisher: Paul Bird
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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
Buckle up—fans of page-turning SF may find themselves binge-reading this novel in one butt-numbing marathon session.
Like a truck with no brakes speeding down a steep mountain road, Islington’s latest is an adrenaline-fueled SF thrill ride that follows a biomechanically enhanced assassin as he tries to understand his mysterious origins.
The chaotic opening scene gives readers a clear indication of what they’re in for: Contract killer Azure, attempting to complete a mission, is involved in a life-or-death battle with a multieyed biomachine called an Argos. “The thing’s bipedal but has six gorilla-like arms that end in half-metre-long claws,” he complains. After Azure barely dispatches the monster and kills his target, his AI assistant, Atti, informs him of his next job: protecting an elderly—and incredibly rich—woman living in a sprawling underground bunker in the middle of nowhere. “Old Woman,” as Azure calls her, isn’t forthcoming with personal details; all Azure can suss out is that she may be the target of a powerful organized crime syndicate—the same organization that employs him! Is Azure’s ultimate goal to save her or kill her? Although the worldbuilding could’ve been more comprehensive, Islington’s editing choices are brilliant—he strips away the insignificant narrative content to create a streamlined, action-packed adventure with seemingly one goal: to keep the reader furiously turning pages. The various mysteries—Azure’s murky beginnings, the tragic death of his best friend years earlier, Old Woman’s true identity, etc.—maintain the momentum and intensity. The takeaway here is the narrative potential of the characters as well as the plethora of subjects that could be explored more deeply, like immortality for the rich, cloning, and the potential to create bioengineered nightmares for “security.” Islington leaves the conclusion tantalizingly ambiguous. This novel could be the jumping-off point for a memorable series.
Buckle up—fans of page-turning SF may find themselves binge-reading this novel in one butt-numbing marathon session.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781668239247
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
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