A twisty and exhilarating dystopian romp.
A small group of rebels in the near future plans a dangerous mission to liberate the population from behavior-controlling nanochips in Cramer’s (Generation M, 2014, etc.) sci-fi tale.
The end result of a global war in 2036 was billions dead and a quarter of the planet uninhabitable. To salvage what remained, the United States and Russia formed the Collective, a 12-person council to govern the world. Bulgarian technologist Dr. Nicholas Petrov then developed a chip that was embedded into people’s heads to control behavior and emotions, which led to world peace. But there are some who want to think and do as they please, which will be nearly impossible with the forthcoming V7 chip (due in 2055) that will transmit individuals’ thoughts to the Collective. The mission for 18-year-old Jerusalem rebel Raissa is to assassinate Petrov and counter the chip’s effects by transmitting the devourware program. She’s working with devourware writer, Christian Ashminov, whose M-code—which powers the nanochips—Petrov stole years ago. Their assignment ultimately connects them with Caleb Saunders, a researcher at the Collective’s NanoArtisans in Boston. Unfortunately, Raissa and Ashminov may not have enough time: The diabolical Petrov has already implemented a scheme that could end with a higher death toll than the war. Cramer’s novel abounds with revelations, starting with why only Caleb hears Petrov’s voice speaking to someone named Adam. The cast is dynamic, like Raissa, for one, who believes she lost her family in a missile strike. Petrov’s ultimate objective entails a good deal of exposition, which precipitates an ardent albeit conspicuous biblical allegory. But this hardly dampens potent scenes such as the nanochip maintaining elation for parents who have just lost their child. There are also myriad displays of Raissa’s extensive combat training: “She threw a roundhouse punch…her knuckles connected above the bridge of his nose, unleashing torrents of blood through his nostrils.”
A twisty and exhilarating dystopian romp.Pub Date: June 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9898128-7-0
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Train Renoir Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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