Both a paean to the sci-fi genre and a captivating return to a space station in a complex universe.
This second volume in Sasaki’s (Welcome to the Madhouse, 2015) Grace Lord series finds the surgeon confronting a strange new intelligence and an old nemesis.
Following the defeat of a deadly virus in the first installment, Grace continues to serve on the medical space station Nelson Mandela, attending to soldiers of the Union of Solar Systems. As a normal routine returns to the lives of Dr. Hiro Al-Fadi (Grace’s boss) and Bud (a singularly capable and handsome android devoted to her), the station receives a visit from famous vid star and director Jude Luis Stefansson. When Grace meets Jude, she learns that he isn’t heroically gorgeous like his fictional creation, Jazz Hazard, but rather a regular, middle-aged man. Jude is at the station because he’s heard of a process by which the mind can be transferred to a robust, new android body. The staff informs him that the experimental technology is not for private use, for any price. Elsewhere, a ghostly presence stalks the station’s corridors, undetectable by the artificial intelligence running the Nelson Mandela. When a murder occurs outside the armory, thoughts turn to the vile Dr. Jeffrey Nestor, who’s sworn revenge on Grace and Bud for their roles in thwarting him during the viral outbreak. For this sci-fi sequel, Sasaki returns with all the winning elements that fans of Star Trekand Isaac Asimov should love, including a large, snarky cast; a robot conflicted by his burgeoning humanity; and animal-adapted soldiers (treated by the station’s dedicated doctors). Sasaki once more explores the ethics of sentient robots and expanded human consciousness in lines like “Does your android, who feels, thinks, remembers just like you, have any rights at all?” The author also treats lovers of sci-fi horror to a brief splatterfest reminiscent of the film Alienbut ultimately introduces a new intelligence to the cast. Throughout, Sasaki displays a propulsive inventiveness as she weaves grand ideas with humor and soul.
Both a paean to the sci-fi genre and a captivating return to a space station in a complex universe.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 365
Publisher: Oddoc Books
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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