A highly complex middle-chapter installment of an intricate SF/fantasy that requires sharp attention.
A celebrity entrepreneur and inventor in the near future confronts a masked enemy, time-travel paradoxes, and historical rewrites in Datta’s sequel to The Winding (2021).
This series installment begins years after the first, focusing again on 21st-century celebrity Vincent Abajian, a scientific genius whose Quantum World company leads the planet in technological progress. He has a secret, genetic “time corrector” ability that allows him to enter a time/space warp called “the core” and shape the past, present, and future. In the world of the novel, “time turbulence” storms occasionally strike, and one such disaster robbed Vincent of his 1990s boarding school love, musician Akane. In the previous book, Vince rediscovered temporary bliss with an alternate version of Akane named Emika, but the relationship soured; Emika was pregnant, but Vince, whose memory was later wiped, isn’t currently aware of this. The long-lost Akane returns to his life, but Vincent’s idyll is interrupted by lingering memories of Emika and her baby. Meanwhile, Quantum World is introducing new mind-data interface helmets that promise a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and downloadable access to many skills. In addition, masked marauder/hacker Vandal starts launching attacks against Vincent and his loved ones. Datta offers a book that’s most likely to appeal to attentive fans of the first series installment. For example, he further complicates the already complex nonlinear structure of The Winding, with the plot unfolding via multiple first-person perspectives in multiple timelines, sometimes recapping the same incidents from different points of view. Numerous footnotes attempt to clarify points or highlight foreshadowing in the last book, but newcomers may still find this volume very difficult to follow. In a preface, the author explains that a sojourn in Japan heavily influenced the material here, and, indeed, readers will find that the work has a very strong anime flavor, with mecha combat suits, Japanese dialogue (partially translated), unresolvable romantic sentiments, and moments of mysticism (the titan Chronos and his rebellious Greek god-children have stakes in the proceedings). Finally, an open ending offers a revelation of a not-so-surprising master villain.
A highly complex middle-chapter installment of an intricate SF/fantasy that requires sharp attention.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 504
Publisher: Bublish, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Punchy, plausible, and bittersweet; studded with zingers until the very last line.
The desperate logistics of planning for the apocalypse reach their climax in the conclusion to a space opera trilogy that began with The Collapsing Empire (2017) and The Consuming Fire (2018).
Time is running out for Cardenia Wu-Patrick, aka Grayland II, emperox of the planet-spanning Interdependency. As she struggles to come up with a plan to save the billions who will suffer and starve in the wake of the collapse of the Flow, the extradimensional network connecting the planets of her far-flung empire, her nemesis, Lady Nadashe Nohamapetan, continues to scheme against her. With the support of many of the noble houses—who plan to abandon their subjects while preserving themselves and their wealth in a flight to End, the only self-sufficient planet in the Interdependency—Nadashe now seeks the throne for herself. Meanwhile, Cardenia’s lover, the Flow physicist Lord Marce Claremont, attempts to devise a scientific solution to the Flow collapse, unaware that Cardenia is hiding vital data from him. And the clever but hot-tempered Lady Kiva Lagos attempts to spy on Nadashe in hopes of defusing the coup, but she may have gotten herself in too deep this time. Scalzi treads a delicate line here: He set out to chart an apocalypse, and a deus ex machina would be cheating. The book also serves as an acknowledgment that intelligence and good intentions are not an impregnable armor against venality and the pitiless laws of physics. (In addition to slowing down Scalzi's writing—something he acknowledges in an afterword—the current sociopolitical situation in the U.S. has clearly flavored the story.) Given those parameters, Scalzi plays fair while still offering his readers some hope. And even when depicting the direst situations, Scalzi’s work retains its snarky cheer.
Punchy, plausible, and bittersweet; studded with zingers until the very last line.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8916-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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