A creepily convincing depiction of the marriage of corporate power and celebrity worship.
In Galvin’s future-fiction novel, everyone’s value is determined by how much corporations bid for them.
Sasha Cross, the look-alike daughter of a famous deceased actor, faces an unpleasant situation as she comes of age in a dystopian future. “I’m about to turn twenty-two,” she says, “yet I have no say in what happens to me.” At 22, citizens are auctioned off to corporate entities who will pay retirement benefits to their parents while reaping 25% of their lifelong income. People are ranked—the elite A’s, professional B’s, middle-class C’s, and laborer D’s. Ambitious parents become “asset managers” as they try to maximize their children’s potential earnings in order to ensure their own security. As Sasha tries to negotiate a future where she can find some meaning outside the artificial glamour of Los Angeles celebrity, she struggles to avoid being exploited by those seeking to profit from her resemblance to her adored mother, including her social-climbing friend Brianna and even her own father, who forces her to participate in a reality show about her auction experience. One of her only supporters is her childhood friend Jason, a prominent video game basketball star. Jason, however, faces his own demons in the form of alcoholism and his relationship with a felon who is determined to drag Jason into his illegal schemes. Galvin’s dystopian vision of a celebrity-obsessed society isn’t new, but it’s exceptionally well realized. Thoughtful social critique, romance, friendship, and family dysfunction play out among a complex cast of characters. Other pluses include a taut storyline of corporate ruthlessness versus grassroots resistance and fantastic SF imaginings—from the wholesale insertion of tracking chips to a massive underground system of organ harvesting.
A creepily convincing depiction of the marriage of corporate power and celebrity worship.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73751-500-5
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Drexel Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.
Having been falsely convicted of murder himself years ago, prosecutor Rusty Sabich defies common wisdom in defending his romantic partner’s adopted son against the same accusation.
Now 76, Rusty has retired to the (fictitious) Skageon Region in the upper Midwest, far removed from Kindle County, Turow’s Chicago stand-in, where he was a star attorney and judge. Aaron Housley, a Black man raised in a bleached rural environment, has had his troubles, including serving four months for holding drugs purchased by Mae Potter, his erratic, on-and-off girlfriend. Now, after suddenly disappearing to parts unknown with her, he returns alone. When days go by without Mae’s reappearance, it is widely assumed that Aaron harmed her. Why else would he be in possession of her phone? Following the discovery of Mae’s strangled body and incriminating evidence that points to Aaron, Rusty steps in. Opposed in court by the uncontrollable, gloriously named prosecutor Hiram Jackdorp, he fears he’s in a lose-lose situation. If he fails to get Aaron off, which is highly possible, the boy’s mother, Bea, will never forgive him. If Rusty wins the case, the quietly detached Bea—who, like half the town, has secrets—will have trouble living with the unsparing methods Rusty uses to free Aaron. In attempting to match, or at least approach, the brilliance of his groundbreaking masterpiece Presumed Innocent (1987), Turow has his own odds to overcome. No minor achievement like a previous follow-up, Innocent (2010), the new novel is a powerful display of straightforward narrative, stuffed with compelling descriptions of people, places, and the legal process. No one stages courtroom scenes better than this celebrated Chicago attorney. But the book, whose overly long scenes add up to more than 500 pages, mostly lacks the gripping intensity and high moral drama to keep those pages turning. It’s an absorbing and entertaining read, but Turow’s fans have come to expect more than that.
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538706367
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
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