Fans of immersive sci-fi, like the work of Philip K. Dick, should take a look; an auspicious start for Jane.
Jane’s debut novel is an inventive, ambitious sci-fi adventure with a heavy dose of science.
Derek Mondragon is having a rough time of it. His buddy, an “EXO gnosint” named Don MacCullum, is recovering in the hospital after having a chunk of his skull taken out in battle. As a gnosint, MacCullum has an ability to figure out complicated patterns, such as the one he discovered in an old book called the Voynich Manuscript—a complicated message to be decoded using an “accidental” genome. This distant-future society has two camps: “accidentals”—in short, naturally occurring humans—and “newstylers,” who have modified themselves genetically. And the two don’t get along. The newstylers on Mars started a rebellion against the emperor on Earth, and MacCullum is considered the final casualty, although hostilities seem to still be open. MacCullum is targeted for what he’s discovered, and Mondragon wants to find out why. But he’s got other problems—his wife leaves him and wants to send their daughter to a state-run hatchery where she can get more attention; her father, who’s on active military duty, doesn’t see her much. His attempt to get out of his service leads him to a secret mission, during which he learns of the emperor’s terrifying plans to build a newstyler army to conquer all of space. Jane’s world is incredibly expansive and well-drawn. Newstylers could buy anything from a fairy to a sentient jellyfish, and there are often political reasons for their choices. Technology and science are at the core of the novel, from how humans change their physical structure to methods they use to travel, theoretically, to the very ends of history. It speaks to the essence of existence—who we are in a time where every bit of us, including our consciousness, can be quantified and projected as a means of travel or transformation. The explanations can get a bit heady at times, but heavy sci-fi fans will find a lot to dig into. And Jane does a decent job balancing the action with the longer stretches of explanation and humor.
Fans of immersive sci-fi, like the work of Philip K. Dick, should take a look; an auspicious start for Jane.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5351-0732-7
Page Count: 604
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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