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
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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