An absolute grand-slam first installment of an SF/fantasy series.
Set on the world of Solace centuries after a United Nations colony ship crash-landed on the planet, this debut novel offers a grand-scale narrative that mixes epic fantasy and SF.
The inhabitants of the Caustlands live within a massive, ringed veil known as the Siinlan that encircles the realm’s six states like a “grey-green penumbra” and acts as a bulwark to the wild and largely unexplored Abwaild beyond. A peculiar, sludgelike river named the Gyring Ash flows around the Siinlan, and a swampy expanse called the Ashlit Mire extends from the Gyring. The entire world—inside and outside the Siinlan—is steeped in mystery: bizarre creatures in the Abwaild; a wasteland of ruins; secret labyrinths beneath Solace’s surface; and strange artifacts from “Old Earth” or an ancient civilization that existed before Starfall, the apocalyptic crash-landing of the colony ship that killed the planet’s inhabitants. The story revolves around a cast of diverse main characters. Dayang, a 12-year-old girl who lives with her affluent family in Kualabu, has trained her entire life to protect her people from the nightmarish creatures lurking beyond the town’s fortified walls. But when she is forced to battle a massive Abwaild creature attacking the town, she uncovers a far-reaching conspiracy that could destroy the entire Caustlands. Then there are Sanyago and Laris, both novices studying at the Presilyo monastery, home to the warrior monks who follow the Triune Path religious sect. After years of relentless training—and manipulation—the two realize that everything they’ve learned may not be the truth. On the other side of the Siinlan, in the Sovereign Nations, Juliaen receives a holy vision—to purify and reclaim the Caustlands for a radical, dissident sect of the Triune Path called the Carvers. Eventually, all of the plot threads intertwine in an explosive collision filled with bombshell revelations and even deeper mysteries.
While this is obviously a character-driven tale—even secondary players are adeptly developed—it’s the meticulous worldbuilding and extensive backstory that make Magleby’s series opener so effortlessly immersive. For example, there’s a creature called a spearstalker: “The four lower legs were nothing too strange, many-jointed, with thick exoskeleton plates, ending in an array of splayed digging-claws. The upper pair, though—they rose from the top, elbow-joint pointed forward, each limb supporting one long thick tube with an unsettling crystalline eyebulb slung just under the front opening.” But the hidden narrative gem here is the deep philosophical undertone. Excerpts like this one are scattered throughout: “Consciousness is both the loftiest power and the deepest mystery of all existence. Do not lend its immense potential lightly. Do not waste its precious, fleeting moments. Never let it give shape to what it should not fathom.” The one minor criticism is the sluggish way in which the tale begins. The author introduces the various character arcs all the way back to when the central players were children. While this information is relevant, it could have easily been revealed through flashbacks, and the novel’s major hooks could have been more appropriately moved closer to the narrative’s beginning instead of hundreds of pages into the story. Still, masterful worldbuilding, a rich tapestry of character-centric threads, and nonstop action and adventure make this a must-read for those who enjoy shelf-bending and genre-blending storylines.
An absolute grand-slam first installment of an SF/fantasy series.Pub Date: June 11, 2020
ISBN: 979-8652350178
Page Count: 560
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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