A gauzy, New-Age fantasy with a mystical heroine.
A healer of astounding spiritual power finds herself challenged by the rise of a pro-science movement that threatens her idyllic planet.
The setting for this debut novel is the virtual paradise planet of Aquilinia, orbited by two moons. Inhabitants of this beautiful world, effectively human, are on such an elevated spiritual plane that they converse with the angels and other representatives of “the One” universal creator (not to mention porpoises and mer-folk). One inhabitant, Remarla, is literally wisdom—aka “Lady Sophia” —incarnated into Aquilinian form as a daughter of the aristocracy who is destined to become a master healer. Early on, she meets the love of her mortal life, Kandornen, born into a line of succession to be the planet’s ruler. Even with bittersweet mandates that he mate with other women of his caste to produce noble offspring, he and Remarla enjoy a union of passion, altruism, and the search for the greater good for all. So what goes wrong? An upstart New Science Society shuns such Aquilinian developments as homeopathy and solar/wind/tidal/crystal power to pursue its own fascinations with fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, and, ultimately, nuclear energy and weapons. Soon New Science outposts and properties spread throughout the planet—and, along with them, land and sea pollution, birth defects, disease, and fallout. Still, the good guys try to deal with the scientists using diplomacy and accommodation, even when the reward is violence and treachery. Mercer’s entry in the mind-body-spirit realm of fantasy fiction pits doctrinaire scientific materialism against a serene worldview of New-Age mysticism, “natural” medicine, and magical cosmology (unicorn alert). One is reminded of L. Ron Hubbard insinuating the psychiatric establishment he loathed into villain roles in his escapist blockbusters. Mercer’s saga, at least, doesn’t take multiple volumes or 800-page counts to get where it is going. Nor does gender politics come into the ideological struggle, as male/female roles are equitable and the worst of the misguided scientists turns out to be an old schoolgirl nemesis. The language—the first-person voice of the pure-hearted Remarla—is more attuned to lyricism than Lucasfilm action (“The unicorn gently nuzzled my neck and shoulder, then walked away, vanishing quietly into the surrounding rainforest”). With its blunt anti-science message, this work will probably not land on Bill Nye’s bookshelf or e-reader.
A gauzy, New-Age fantasy with a mystical heroine.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5043-0558-7
Page Count: 204
Publisher: BalboaPressAU
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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