A pointed, if occasionally hyperbolic, take on dystopian sci-fi.
Bankole draws on contemporary racial issues to craft an unsettling future in her debut sci-fi novel.
In a dystopian future, the Earth’s surface has been rendered uninhabitable, and the United States has been dissolved following a second civil war. The residents of the Republic of Kalifornia are divided between those who make their homes on the floating Sky Shelf and those who live in surface slums and underground tunnels. The Sky Shelf residents live in a high-tech metropolis with modern food and medicine, while those below suffer from genetic mutations and poverty. The poor often resort to trading blood samples for basic amenities, as doctors use their blood to produce medicine. Those in the tunnels lead communal lives shaped by mysticism and spirituality, engaging in meditative rituals and practicing alternative forms of healing. The society is further divided by strict racial segregation; the Sky Shelf government has even placed a ban on interracial relationships to keep bloodlines pure, banishing those without proper pedigrees. Messob is a young woman living in the tunnels who’s fated to travel to the Sky Shelf as an ambassador for her people and to work to end the racist laws. Her quest is complicated, however, by her taboo romance with a young doctor who believes that her blood could be the key to developing more effective medicine. Bankole effectively uses multiple historical and cultural allusions to shape her vision of a troubled future, and she roots her world’s woes in present-day politics, which gives the novel a rich, evocative subtext. However, it also limits the effectiveness of the parallels she draws. References to real-life events (such as the killing of Trayvon Martin) resonantly clarify the story’s core concept but may also come off as heavy-handed. These moments are spare, however, and the overall subject matter is strong enough to make up for a few missteps.
A pointed, if occasionally hyperbolic, take on dystopian sci-fi.Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1595945235
Page Count: 252
Publisher: WingSpan Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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