A smart, uplifting near-future tale about using novel means to fight injustices.
In Sompalli and Menon’s SF novel, a grieving man returns to his homeland as the tech-savvy mid-21st-century world sees welcome changes.
Californian Sid Manekshaw has come to dread early-morning phone calls. Just a year ago, he got news that his wife had died from a stroke; now, the call is about his parents, who have perished in a car accident in India. Sid, a 45-year-old philanthropist who’s been independently wealthy ever since he sold the startup business he co-founded, flies to the Indian city of Trichy. Feelings of denial and guilt quickly set in, since he believes he should have been taking care of his mother and father. While at their house, Sid is surprised to learn that they had apparently been practicing Hinduism. A photo of them with a woman he doesn’t recognize leads Sid to an ashram run by a Black American woman named Tess Robinson, who left the U.S. decades ago largely because of the racism she and her loved ones incessantly faced. Things in the U.S. have improved dramatically, however, and Sid tells her all about the amazing technology that’s been developed to tackle discrimination. Sompalli and Menon’s short novel is a taut, heartfelt portrait of a man drowning in sorrow—Sid initially has trouble accepting the fact that his parents are gone, and even double-checks the news of their deaths. He gradually shifts focus to a potentially better Earth to help him overcome his grief. The authors masterfully blend real-life history (up until 2020) into their depiction of an increasingly positive (and sadly fictional) America. The tech, which specifically targets racism, is intriguing, if not entirely convincing (“Users saw all people as mauve-colored, instead of white or black”). Sid discusses it at length, and the text includes other conversations about social progress, from a speaker at Tess’ ashram to a TED talker discussing his own technological advancements in impeding gun violence. The message is clear: People hurting others, whether physically or emotionally, make this world a much darker place.
A smart, uplifting near-future tale about using novel means to fight injustices.Pub Date: July 17, 2022
ISBN: 9781796227390
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2026
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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