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
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
