Prolific sci-fi author Bova (Leviathans of Jupiter, 2011, etc.) returns with the sixth installment of his Orion series, his first since 1995’s Orion Among the Stars.
This latest story of time-jumping warrior Orion opens with him helping Beowulf defeat the monster Grendel (and Grendel’s mother) in ancient England. Soon after, he is transported in time to meet a young Arthur, the legendary future king. Orion’s nefarious and powerful Creator, Aten, the Golden One, schemes to cause Arthur’s death and set in motion a long-lasting barbarian empire as part of his plot to control the space-time continuum. But the independent-minded Orion, with help from another Creator, and romantic interest, Anya, is determined to defy him. As time-travel adventures go, the book’s plot is relatively simple, with some famous figures replaced by Bova’s characters (for example, Anya as the Lady of the Lake). Its straightforward approach has its appeal; in some ways, the book feels like a throwback to 1950s pulp fiction. The story, though not particularly challenging, moves along at a rapid clip, and the fight scenes, in particular, are exciting and well-drawn. The biggest problem is that the characters, often saddled with stilted dialogue, never quite come alive; it feels as if Bova is merely moving pawns around a chessboard—although perhaps that’s fitting in a story where history itself is being manipulated by outside forces. That said, it may make it hard for some readers, particularly newcomers to the series, to care about the characters’ fates. The ending leaves open the possibility for more Orion adventures, which will be good news for series’ fans.
A pleasant, if unremarkable, time-travel diversion.
Pub Date: July 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3017-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
A mixed bag of stories: some tired but several capable of poetically piercing the heart.
Science fiction author (The Wall of Storms, 2016) and translator (The Redemption of Time, Baoshu, 2019) Liu’s short stories explore the nature of identity, consciousness, and autonomy in hostile and chaotic worlds.
Liu deftly and compassionately draws connections between a genetically altered girl struggling to reconcile her human and alien sides and 20th-century Chinese young men who admire aspects of Western culture even as they confront its xenophobia (“Ghost Days”). A poor salvager on a distant planet learns to channel a revolutionary spirit through her alter ego of a rabbit (“Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard”). In “Byzantine Empathy,” a passionate hacktivist attempts to upend charitable giving through blockchain and VR technology even as her college roommate, an executive at a major nonprofit, fights to co-opt the process, a struggle which asks the question of whether pure empathy is possible—or even desired—in our complex geopolitical structure. Much of the collection is taken up by a series of overlapping and somewhat repetitive stories about the singularity, in which human minds are scanned and uploaded to servers, establishing an immortal existence in virtuality, a concept which many previous SF authors have already explored exhaustively. (Liu also never explains how an Earth that is rapidly becoming depleted of vital resources somehow manages to indefinitely power servers capable of supporting 300 billion digital lives.) However, one of those stories exhibits undoubted poignance in its depiction of a father who stubbornly clings to a flesh-and-blood existence for himself and his loved ones in the rotting remains of human society years after most people have uploaded themselves (“Staying Behind”). There is also some charm in the title tale, a fantasy stand-alone concerning a young woman snatched from her home and trained as a supernaturally powered assassin who retains a stubborn desire to seek her own path in life.
A mixed bag of stories: some tired but several capable of poetically piercing the heart.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-03-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
PERSPECTIVES
With its bug-eyed monsters, one might think Dune was written thirty years ago; it has a fantastically complex schemata and...
This future space fantasy might start an underground craze.
It feeds on the shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Martian series), Aeschylus, Christ and J.R. Tolkien. The novel has a closed system of internal cross-references, and features a glossary, maps and appendices dealing with future religions and ecology. Dune itself is a desert planet where a certain spice liquor is mined in the sands; the spice is a supremely addictive narcotic and control of its distribution means control of the universe. This at a future time when the human race has reached a point of intellectual stagnation. What is needed is a Messiah. That's our hero, called variously Paul, then Muad'Dib (the One Who Points the Way), then Kwisatz Haderach (the space-time Messiah). Paul, who is a member of the House of Atreides (!), suddenly blooms in his middle teens with an ability to read the future and the reader too will be fascinated with the outcome of this projection.
With its bug-eyed monsters, one might think Dune was written thirty years ago; it has a fantastically complex schemata and it should interest advanced sci-fi devotees.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1965
ISBN: 0441013597
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Chilton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1965
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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