A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.
An independent young girl finds a blue door in a field and glimpses another world, nudging her onto a path of discovery, destiny, empowerment, and love.
Set at the turn of the 20th century, Harrow's debut novel centers on January Scaller, who grows up under the watchful eye of the wealthy Cornelius Locke, who employs her father, Julian, to travel the globe in search of odd objects and valuable treasures to pad his collection, housed in a sprawling Vermont mansion. January appears to have a charmed childhood but is stifled by the high-society old boy’s club of Mr. Locke and his friends, who treat her as a curiosity—a mixed-race girl with a precocious streak, forced into elaborate outfits and docile behavior for the annual society gatherings. When she's 17, her father seemingly disappears, and January finds a book that will change her life forever. With her motley crew of allies—Samuel, the grocer’s son; Jane, the Kenyan woman sent by Julian to be January’s companion; and Bad, her faithful dog—January embarks on an adventure that will lead her to discover secrets about Mr. Locke, the world and its hidden doorways, and her own family. Harrow employs the image of the door (“Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges”) as well as the metaphor (a “geometry of absence”) to great effect. Similes and vivid imagery adorn nearly every page like glittering garlands. While some stereotypes are present, such as the depiction of East African women as pantherlike, the book has a diverse cast of characters and a strong woman lead. This portal fantasy doesn’t shy away from racism, classism, and sexism, which helps it succeed as an interesting story.
A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-42199-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Frenetic action viewed in a black fun-house mirror.
An uptight navy commander, an intelligent app aboard an android body, a lesbian pirate, a bored young princess, a curmudgeonly old warrior, and a snarky battle AI save the galaxy from angry species-ist cultists. Well, they make a start.
Unsurprisingly for readers familiar with Birmingham's work (The Golden Minute, 2018, etc.), his latest trends toward the sanguinary. Centuries ago the Sturm, fanatics intent on "liberating" those they term true humans by exterminating anybody with genetic or cybernetic enhancements, attacked and were driven off—just barely—by Adm. Frazer McLennan and Herodotus, his battle AI. Now they're back. Their surprise attack on the prosperous and powerful Armadale system with warships and malicious computer code decisively knocks out the defenses. All is not lost, though. Decorated yet still insecure Lt. Lucinda Hardy finds herself in command of the Royal Armadalen Navy's only surviving warship. A Sturm attack on a prison compound enables Booker, a soldier app sentenced to deletion for treason, to switch to a robot body and escape. Pirate captain Sephina L'trel, whose usual operational mode involves ripping off outfits like the Yakuza, puts her nefarious skills to fighting the invaders. Warrior-turned-astroarchaeologist McLennan leaves off bickering with Herodotus long enough to take charge and organize the rescue of young Princess Alessia of Montanblanc, whom the Sturm captured after murdering the rest of her family. Following the introductions, the narrative canters along at a good clip, dashing off insane cannibals, exploding warships, detached heads, and cartwheeling body parts, with occasional transfusions of dark comic relief. Some highlights: McLennan appears stark naked to greet a bunch of pompous bigwigs; in a riotous bar scene, Sephina and crew, Yakuza, and Sturm all blaze away at each other; Booker's dismay at being loaded into a mechanical hedge trimmer.
Frenetic action viewed in a black fun-house mirror.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-59331-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
One of the more imaginative and ingenious additions to the dystopian canon.
Carey offers a post-apocalyptic tale set in England in a future when most humans are "empty houses where people used to live."
Sgt. Parks, Pvt. Gallagher, Miss Justineau and Dr. Caldwell flee an English military camp, a scientific site for the study of "hungries," zombielike creatures who feast on flesh, human or otherwise. These once-humans are essentially "fungal colonies animating human bodies." After junkers—anarchic survivalists—use hungries to breach the camp's elaborate wire fortifications, the four survivors head for Beacon, a giant refuge south of London where uninfected citizens have retreated over the past two decades, bringing along one of the study subjects, 10-year-old Melanie, a second-generation hungry. Like others of her generation, Melanie possesses superhuman strength and a superb intellect, and she can reason and communicate. Dr. Caldwell had planned to dissect Melanie's brain, but Miss Justineau thinks Melanie is capable of empathy and human interaction, which might make her a bridge between humans and hungries. Their philosophical dispute continues in parallel to a survival trek much like the one in McCarthy's On the Road. The four either kill or hide from junkers and hungries (which are animated by noise, movement and human odors). The characters are somewhat clichéd—Parks, rugged veteran with an empathetic core; Gallagher, rube private and perfect victim; Caldwell, coldhearted objectivist ever focused on prying open Melanie’s skull. It may be Melanie's role to lead second-generation hungries in a revival of civilization, which in this imaginative, ominous assessment of our world and its fate, offers cold comfort.
One of the more imaginative and ingenious additions to the dystopian canon.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-27815-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
PROFILES
© Copyright 2025 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.
