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SEVEN SURRENDERS

Name: SEVEN SURRENDERS
Author: Ada Palmer
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7802-6

From the Terra Ignota series , Vol. 2

by Ada Palmer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2017

Rich food for thought; perhaps not entirely digestible.

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War and chaos loom in this conclusion to the story begun in Too Like the Lightning (2016), in which a child with godlike powers disrupts a supposedly serene future society built on Enlightenment principles.

In 2454, nations, called Hives, are no longer based upon geographical location but upon intellectual and philosophical alignment. This arrangement has worked so well that peace has reigned for 300 years, so long that no one would even know how to conduct a war if one were to break out. But a few decades ago, the Mardi family determined that war was inevitable, and that the later it came, the more devastating it would be, and so decided to incite the war themselves to minimize the damage. They were forestalled by our narrator, Mycroft Canner, who brutally murdered them to prevent that war from ever coming about. Unfortunately, his efforts seem to have been in vain; the last surviving Mardi has returned to Earth to continue his family’s work. Public unrest rises at the revelation of some very unpleasant Hive government secrets (some of which were similarly intended to keep the peace at any price) and the machinations of Madame D’Arouet, a brilliant and politically connected brothel-keeper who uses sex and gender as weapons against a proudly gender-free society that is therefore defenseless against such ploys. And then there is Bridger, a child who can bring toys to life, who could save the world…or doom it. Sometimes the answers in a story are less satisfying than the intriguing questions posed by a preceding volume; readers' appreciation of the resolution here depends on whether they accept the author’s argument that humanity will always tend toward war. Palmer also hedges her bets by not tying up all the loose ends; she never explains the more supernatural elements of the plot and leaves the future of her world uncertain.

Rich food for thought; perhaps not entirely digestible.

Pub Date: March 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-7653-7802-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017

Categories:

DYSTOPIAN FICTION | SCIENCE FICTION

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PERHAPS THE STARS
by Ada Palmer

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THE WILL TO BATTLE
by Ada Palmer

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TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING
by Ada Palmer

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
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.