A unique SF romance, though less free-wheeling than earlier books in its series.
Semimythological sisters return—and one may get too close to humans—in the lusty third book in George-Sturges’ SF series.
A group of sisters from the far-flung place called Ventopia tended to the delicate planet known as Earth in the first two books in this series. Earth was created by the girls’ parents—their father, DeMatter, and mother, Nebula—though it was their job as young goddesses to be “responsible for creating, protecting, and guiding various life forms” on the planet. One of the sisters, a girl named Afar, became a little too involved with humans; this book is, for the most part, her story. Simply put, Afar may be too attached to Earth’s first man, a figure known as Mada whose “masculinity was magnetic.” She experiments with Mada sexually (though avoiding intercourse) and, as he explains it, “stimulated me orally, extracted my DNA seeds, mixed them with her own, and planted them around the earth.” Afar even guides him to “Trees of Knowledge,” each of which holds “a secret that can be used for good or evil.” Mada was taught that a ruler should know how to control the masses, and after Afar makes him powerful, jealousy and murder erupt. The book ultimately revisits Afar’s sisters as well, taking up their stories where the second volume in the series left them. This installment, however, has a more earnest tone than the first two books, which involved horrors like rape and murder without losing their whimsical nature. The narrative here exchanges much of the earlier whimsy for the kind of heartfelt sentiment evident in Afar’s early feelings for Mada: “The more she watched him, the more she found herself falling in love with him.” As the romance develops, such passions can become tedious, though the sexual and other action keeps things lively. What will become of this man and his goddess? Though readers familiar with the previous books know that what will eventually happen won’t be good, how the story gets there proves a strange, lust-filled path.
A unique SF romance, though less free-wheeling than earlier books in its series.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-70706-532-5
Page Count: 153
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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