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The Wallbuilders

Name: The Wallbuilders
Author: Chris Nelson
ISBN: 978-1-5169-2617-6

A FICTION

by Chris Nelson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 19, 2015

An offbeat tale of freedom and duty in a rural totalitarian society.

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A dystopian thriller set in a community that has as much in common with Winter’s Bone as The Hunger Games.

In this debut novel, Nelson tells the story of a walled community in a vaguely Appalachian setting, where “Sentinels” protect the settlement against “Outlanders,” adolescents are “Chosen” for careers, and art is forbidden as a distraction from civic obligations. The unnamed protagonist directs his narration to an unnamed friend (“First time I actually seen your place. Even though I helped you build it”) whom he’s just buried. When authorities have questions about the narrator’s behavior, he’s sent to develop an abandoned orchard on the outskirts of the settlement. He’s also given responsibility for Mirabelle, the young daughter of his friend and an Outlander woman. Through flashbacks, the narrator reveals how his friend challenged the community’s norms and the events that led to his own exile. Ultimately, the narrator must decide how committed he is to enforcing those norms and defeating the Outlanders, and how flexible his standards are in the service of the community. Nelson takes a different approach to common dystopian tropes, such as rebellion and control. The book draws its world in detail, down to a technique for building a roof in violation of official standards, but the narrator’s focus is domestic, and the book doesn’t try to place the walled community within a broader context. However, a conflict over the community’s coal deposits adds a lightly explored environmental aspect to the story. Nelson’s frequent misuse of punctuation in dialogue (“ ‘Want a hand’ he says’ ”) and ellipses (“ ‘It has been...’ snaps his fingers in a circle ‘… one hundred and seven years since the last Outsider Incursion’ ”) can be grating, though, especially when contrasted with the deliberate non-standard grammar of the narrator’s voice (“It ain’t ownership, though, so much as it’s a duty to care”), which helps to establish the rural South setting.

An offbeat tale of freedom and duty in a rural totalitarian society.

Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-5169-2617-6

Page Count: 114

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

DYSTOPIAN FICTION

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MORNING STAR

From the Red Rising Trilogy series , Vol. 3

by Pierce Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2016

An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.

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Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.

This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”

An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015

Categories:

SCIENCE FICTION | DYSTOPIAN FICTION

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IRON GOLD
by Pierce Brown

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GOLDEN SON
by Pierce Brown

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RED RISING
by Pierce Brown

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GOLDEN SON

From the Red Rising Trilogy series , Vol. 2

by Pierce Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 6, 2015

Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...

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Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.

The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.

Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.