A heartening exploration of outer space and a teen’s true self.
In this sci-fi debut, a young person comes of age aboard a planet-hopping cargo ship.
Alfie Dale, a legendary glassmaker is a settler on the distant planet of Outer-23 in the settlement zone of Gutshot. There, men “own the stores, run the bars and lead the settlement,” while women “gave birth to more men, or died in the whorehouse trying.” Problems are solved as they were in the old American West—by dueling. One day, Alfie’s 14-year-old daughter, Arisa, throws dust bombs back and forth with her friend Nate Jennings. When she accidentally hits wanted man Wild Clyde Wallace, he mistakes Arisa for a boy, due to her short hair and scrawny frame, and attempts to kill her. After Alfie successfully saves his daughter’s life, Wild Clyde’s brother, Munroe, shows up for revenge. Alfie hides Arisa on the Calypso, a cargo ship with a tightknit, friendly crew that travels among the well-off “Inner” and frontierlike “Outer” worlds. Accepted by the veteran shipmates, including Lucas, Kelle, and Safia, Arisa starts a new life, taking the name “Ari.” She’s always been more comfortable dressing like a boy, and she does her best to “pass” as a young man while gathering details about other people who look like her, with “tea-colored” skin and uncommonly shaped eyes. In this series starter, Thomas offers a coming-of-age tale that isn’t held back by standard tropes of space-based adventure. The plot proceeds episodically—sometimes with gory violence—and Ari ages in fits and starts. Ari, as someone grappling with gender issues, is a welcome character in the sci-fi genre. Along the way, she grows closer to both Safia and Lucas, the latter of whom eventually reveals that he knows that Ari was born female, saying, “I’ve never, in all my time on Calypso, ever come across a man with a smile as amazing as yours.” Safia, who’s gay, comforts Ari with the statement: “You’re not pretending....You’re living. Never think otherwise.” Other key moments in the novel include Ari’s first sight of an ocean and the introduction of Laila, a companion who helps Ari walk confidently as a man.
A heartening exploration of outer space and a teen’s true self.Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5348-3379-1
Page Count: 152
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2017
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
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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