Stuffed with ideas, but too nonfictionally pedantic to fully satisfy as a novel.
Third entry in Stableford's future history series (Architects of Emortality, 1999, etc.). By the 26th century, humans no longer expect to die of natural causes—though accidents still happen; hence, they're ``emortal,'' not ``immortal.'' As a boy in Tibet, Mortimer Gray meets Julius Ngomi, one of Earth's true rulers, inside an abandoned lamasery. Later, Mortimer and eightyearold Emily Marchant are the only survivors of a shipwreck. These two events inspire him to become a historian. He embarks on a massive and ambitious multivolume history of death. The first volume begins with the remote past, examining how Neanderthals and CroMagnons developed rituals in order to cope with death. Emily, meanwhile, a brilliant sculptor and builder in ice, becomes very rich and eventually moves to the outer solar system. But Mortimer's developing opus proves controversial, as various bizarre cults and groups claim it validates their theories involving masochism, torture, or neardeath experience; some even embrace actual death. Mortimer himself barely survives an attack by a woman who's infected herself with a lethal disease that she thinks gives her perfect clarity of mind. As the centuries pass, though, his history grows larger and more comprehensive and ultimately makes him rich and famous. Humanity expands throughout the solar system and explores nearby stars in asteroidspaceships, eventually encountering true starfaring aliens. At home, meanwhile, various factions, including Julius and Emily, argue over the destiny of the human race.
Stuffed with ideas, but too nonfictionally pedantic to fully satisfy as a novel.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-87206-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
An engrossing and fast-paced read that doesn’t hit the mark it aims for.
The relationship between a young debtor and the trillionaire who owns him serves as a parable for the ills of capitalism.
Debut novelist Szpara imagines an only slightly more dystopian United States than the one that exists today, in which the wealth gap has grown so large that the country is more or less split into trillionaires and debtors. Debtors inherit their family's debt, increasing it exponentially over time. To pay it off, many sign up to become slaves for a predetermined amount of time, with the “choice” to inject a drug called Dociline that turns them into a kind of blissful zombie who has no memory, pain, or agency for the duration of their term. The drug is supposed to wear off within two weeks, but when Elisha Wilder’s mother returned from her debt-paying term, it never did, leaving her docile indefinitely. To resolve the rest of his family’s debt, Elisha becomes a Docile to none other than Alex Bishop, the CEO of the company that manufactures Dociline. He invokes his right to refuse the drug, one of the only Dociles ever to do so. Alex enacts a horrifying period of brainwashing in order to modify Elisha’s behavior to mimic that of an “on-med.” The resulting relationship between them is disturbing. As Alex wakes up to his complicity in a broken system—“I am Dr. Frankenstein and I’ve fallen in love with my own monster”—he becomes more sympathetic, for better or worse. As Elisha suffers not only brainwashing, rape, and abuse, but the recovery that must come after, his love for—fixation with, dependence on—Alex poses interesting questions about consent: “Being my own person hurts too much….Why should an opportunity hurt so much?” However, despite excellent pacing and a gripping narrative, Szpara fails to address the history of slavery in America—a history that is race-based and continues to shape the nation. This is a story with fully realized queer characters that is unafraid to ask complicated questions; as a parable, it functions well. But without addressing this important aspect of the nation and economic structures within which it takes place, it cannot succeed in its takedown of oppressive systems.
An engrossing and fast-paced read that doesn’t hit the mark it aims for.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21615-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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