A marvelous young hero propels this sharply written and wholly absorbing space opera.
In Watts’ YA SF novel, a teen is the only one who can stop a powerful artificial intelligence from falling into the wrong hands.
Gaby Rhodes, a cadet at Moore Academy on the planet Amiens, hopes to become a war hero like her late brother, Jules. But while Jules had been an elite soldier, Gaby’s “genius-level” skills at mathematics make her more suited for the Intelligence Division. As such, an admiral invites her to join a training exercise aboard the spaceship Discordia, which Gaby quickly learns is essentially an experiment. The ship houses Passenger, an artificial intelligence that can fuse with a human consciousness and hack other AI-protected systems. In an ongoing 70-year war between the Network of Corporate Protectorates and the Commonwealth, Passenger could give one side a strategic advantage. Gaby trains to integrate with the AI, which becomes more crucial than ever when there’s a mutiny on Discordia. As someone is unmistakably after Passenger, Gaby safeguards the AI by fully connecting to it—but if they stick together for too long, the connection may be irreversible. Watts loads this distant-future tale with intriguing technology and a dense backstory. Gaby, however, is the story’s true driver; she faces relatable dilemmas as an ambitious young woman whom society expects to marry a man and raise children. The author effectively dramatizes Gaby’s attempts at hacking AI systems in surreal but tangible scenes teeming with bits of her memories and imagination (“It takes four tries, and some coaching from Passenger (apparently I wasn’t imagining with enough details), but I’m wearing a sharp business suit when I exit the unoccupied storeroom”). The narrative builds to suspenseful moments aboard the starship while a concurrent plot, taking place years earlier, showcases the mission that led to Jules being dubbed a war hero. Both plotlines come to a head in the searing final act.
A marvelous young hero propels this sharply written and wholly absorbing space opera.Pub Date: July 12, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2024
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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