An entertaining and thoughtful futuristic tale.
In this debut SF novel, a teenage girl and her empath must escape their totalitarian government to love each other freely.
Neve Hall, 17, is proud to live in the Nation, which emerged generations ago, unified by the Grand Expulsions that exiled non-Nationals. Soon afterward, climate warming caused mass extinctions, but the Nation has prospered thanks to a robust civil service consisting of four classes: Laborers, Soldiers, Enforcers, and Sufferers. The last relieve emotional pain through a combination of personal qualities and technology. When a young, leonine Sufferer (empath) steps in to protect a traitor—reviled in Neve’s patriotic world—from a bloodthirsty mob, she’s impressed by his kindness and courage. Soon afterward, Neve accidentally finds out that her new Sufferer is the same young man, Micah Ward, 19. But the Sufferer-Sieve (non-empath) relationship is anonymous by law. Recognizing Neve from their session, Micah asks her not to confess her discovery until his punishment for helping a traitor is decided. While meeting to discuss the case’s progress, the two fall in love, but Sufferers are not allowed to marry. They also die young, aged prematurely by the pain they take on, and can never quit. When Neve and Micah run afoul of the Nation’s harsh laws, Neve vows to find a way out by journeying north to the New American Republic of the Atlantic, or Nara, which has snow, wild animals, and freedom. But escaping won’t be easy. In this series opener, Marin provides a well-rounded picture of a plausible future with aspects relatable to today, such as the Nation’s anti-immigrant policies and its bleak border wall. The relationship between Neve and Micah goes deeper than physical attraction. Through him, Neve learns of the Nation’s limitations and cruelties, helping her to grow in perspective, and his bravery inspires her to risk all to save him. Meanwhile, Micah finds comfort in Neve’s tenderness. At times, Neve insists on rather pointless and even dangerous self-sacrifices, such as wearing a conspicuous red traitor’s armband when she’s on the run, but this is consistent with a teenager’s melodramatic emotions.
An entertaining and thoughtful futuristic tale.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-949931-20-4
Page Count: 237
Publisher: Inkspell Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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