Reading far more like a book for young teenagers than one with a strictly adult audience, this easygoing adventure has an...
Vaughn (Dreams of the Golden Age, 2014, etc.) offers a stand-alone that finds a Martian colonist struggling to adapt to life on Earth.
When Martian-born teenager Polly Newton and her twin brother, Charles, are forced to leave their home on the red planet to attend the Galileo Academy on Earth, she is enraged. How dare her mother thwart her plans to intern at the astrodome by sending her “dirtside” to “old, grubby, crowded, archaic, backward, stifling”—not to mention heavy-gravity—Earth? Beyond Polly’s chagrin at this setback to her original plan to become the captain of a starship, she senses there is more to this forced journey than the simple opportunity to get a stellar education. On Earth, Polly, Charles, and the other offworld kids struggle to adjust to eating animal flesh and living under an open sky. After drawing attention to herself by getting in trouble for taking an unauthorized ride on a cycle, Polly gains the admiration of the other students and bonds with a group of friends. When suspicious, dangerous events begin to occur, Polly’s initial instincts that something is amiss at this academy for the elite are confirmed. In narrator Polly, Vaughn creates a feisty, intelligent protagonist and places her in what is essentially a classic school story, albeit one with spaceships. In her future, racial and ethnic differences exist but are downplayed, societal friction introduced in the offworlders’ contact with the Earthers, who sneer at their accents and backward customs. It is Polly’s teen snarkiness and strong sense of self that will have readers rooting for her to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Reading far more like a book for young teenagers than one with a strictly adult audience, this easygoing adventure has an affable appeal.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8220-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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