In a futuristic society divided by power and class, an audacious plan unfolds to restore justice and equality in this dystopian novel.
As the story opens, Ansley Brightmore, a reclusive professor, approaches the center where he will receive a treatment designed to extend his life. Years earlier, a catastrophic financial collapse left the world in shambles, and a group of men known as the Overseers rose to power and reorganized society according to a strict hierarchy. Citizens of Arameus were divided into “Nephites,” the social elite (of which Brightmore is a member), and “Natural Born,” the enslaved workers. Nanocyte treatments offer eternal life to the Nephites alone. At a place called the Institute, Brightmore takes an interest in the work of a young academic, Arian Cyannah, who’s developing a bot that could render nanocyte treatments obsolete—and correct the Overseers’ injustice. The Overseers, meanwhile, have also taken an interest in Brightmore’s activities, and one of their Consulates, Tiberius Septus, has a plan to help stop them. Septus asks his consort, Kaiya, a beautiful Natural Born, to recruit Cyannah as a spy for the Overseers. Cyannah soon finds his loyalties torn between Brightmore and the alluring Kaiya. Other supporting characters include Jabari Stoudamyre, a gifted athlete who’s loyal to Brightmore’s cause, and Matthew Conway, Cyannah’s student, who uses his research to his own advantage. When Cyannah discovers that his bot is doing unintended things, his mission takes on added urgency and danger. The treatments offer the promise of extending a person’s life forever—but they’re also ripe for exploitation.
Debut authors Arla and Compton’s ambitious first novel in the Arameus Chronicle combines fast-paced action with a thoughtful exploration of the ethical implications of technological advances. Arameus is vividly rendered, from the social order that dictates every facet of a citizen’s life to popular sports and leisure activities. The story offers a trio of strong protagonists, and their actions give the novel momentum: Brightmore is the driving force behind most of the action, and repeated flashbacks offer glimpses into a tragedy that changed his life forever. Cyannah is shown to be a talented scientist who accepts his place in society until he meets someone who challenges his views. Meanwhile, Kaiya uses her wiles to survive, yet her loyalties remain elusive. The supporting characters are similarly well-drawn. Overall, the propulsive narrative offers a number of surprising and rewarding plot twists, anchored by an examination of the use—and potential for abuse—of the nanocyte treatments. Arla and Compton use a number of different viewpoints to lay out how the treatment evolved from a promising scientific breakthrough to a means by which the Overseers gained control over an entire society. However, they also balance the philosophical issues with well-constructed action sequences, and these culminate in an energetic and suspenseful climax that helps set the stage for a planned sequel.
A provocative first installment in a promising sci-fi series that may also appeal to fans of techno-thrillers.
Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9897544-4-6
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Holland Brown Books
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
