A fast-paced, if slightly uneven, spacefaring tale.
There’s a new threat brewing against Earth, and the old crew of the spacecraft Magellan reunites to fight it off in Karpf’s SF sequel to Prelude to Extinction (2019).
It’s been three years since the Magellan’s crew members completed their last mission and went their separate ways. Jack Harrison, who’s now in charge of the alien archive program and the only holder of a precious set of alien files, finds himself facing many challenges. First and foremost is the ongoing threat of multiple, inbound Kuiper Belt Objects on their way to Earth; although humans have decades to prepare to intercept them, the sheer number of objects is worrying experts. A possible solution lies with alien tech, which Magellan crew members Kurt and Nadya Hoffman are hoping to use to increase the speed of Earth ships. But when the first engine test goes awry, causing multiple fatalities, Jack find himself cut off from communication with his old crew and under scrutiny from people who seem bent on accusing him of treason. Meanwhile, an old ally of Jack’s returns, but their willingness to help humankind is predicated on terms and conditions that Jack isn’t very happy about—and later, he faces an entirely new enemy. This short sequel offers readers familiar crew members confronting a different set of challenges, from existential threats from deep space to internal, earthbound conflicts caused by a break in diplomacy and politics. As it does so, it keeps up a brisk pace as characters (and readers) barely have time to digest one threat and understand the rationale behind it before another hurtles their way. The characters’ reactions can be frustratingly bland at times—the word calmly, for example, pops up dozens of times—and the action-driven plot is filled with sudden shifts that some will find jarring. That said, the high level of excitement makes for a diverting read, particularly for fans of the previous installment.
A fast-paced, if slightly uneven, spacefaring tale.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2022
ISBN: 979-8844498039
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
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.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
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
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