A propulsive, sharply crafted tale about a planetary war.
In this YA sci-fi debut, an alien world plays host to conflict among three humanoid tribes.
Scarlatti is a planet lit by two suns in the Gemelos System. Sharing this world are the Herons (who bleed green), the Elik (who bleed blue), and the Humans (who bleed red). Each tribe exists within strictly enforced borders, and trespassers invite murder. Eighteen-year-old Breaker is a Human repairman who lost his older brother, Brandon, to such internecine conflict. Breaker also lost his leg, which has been replaced with a cybernetic limb that he affectionately calls Circuit. One day—or dia, as the Scarlatti say—Breaker chases after his 13-year-old brother, Brody, who has sneaked from the Human compound into danger beyond the border. In the wilderness, Breaker encounters a hidden spaceship. Meanwhile, in the Elik’s glass city of Houtiri, the Human Malani celebrates the Twin Suns Festival with her crush, Fic. She’s quite the anomaly among the Elik, since she was kidnapped as a child and given an experimental set of metal wings. Malani’s bliss is short-lived when Heron fighters assault the festival, killing scores of innocents and making her a prisoner once more. In Heron captivity, she learns that their ruler, King Oma, fears the Elik military and desires its secrets. While Malani holds out through torture, she meets another imprisoned Human, one with a cybernetic leg. In this richly imagined start to a new sci-fi series, Reed brings optimism to the goal of solving entrenched violence in a galaxy far, far away. Scarlatti, like a lush Mars, is evoked in lines like “From the burgundy and blush trees to the carmine peaks to the ruby glow of the suns, this land wore a blanket of blood.” The plot echoes real-world tyranny when King Oma manipulates Breaker and Malani to unlock the spaceship’s technology, thereby gaining the advantage when war ignites. The Humans too are ready to accommodate the Herons, believing that their red blood originates on Scarlatti. Yet, as Malani says, when you share someone’s home “all other details fade like background music.”
A propulsive, sharply crafted tale about a planetary war.Pub Date: May 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68291-310-9
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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