Heightened storytelling and characterization uplift a familiar spies-chase-superpowered-kid premise.
In this debut novel, a boy finds an ancient medallion that elevates his scientific knowledge to superhuman level—which makes him a quarry for ruthless American government agents.
In Shanahan’s SF thriller, the title character is a 10-year-old Virginia schoolboy who finds a miraculous artifact—actually an ancient Navajo medallion called the “Nílch’I”—in a stream bed. A prologue has informed readers that the object was stolen from the United States government at the end of World War II by a Rita Hayworth–lookalike, secretary Eleanor Cole, who was brutally gunned down during an escape attempt. But in 2020, the recovered artifact amps up Hollis Whittaker’s knowledge of math and science considerably—astronomically, in fact. When Hollis remaps the whole solar system and proves the long-theorized existence of a 10th planet beyond Pluto, the fifth grader becomes famous overnight, though all the slightly overweight boy can say about the matter is that it’s “cool.” When an antiques dealer posts an image of the medallion online for enthusiasts, she is summarily murdered. Hollis soon becomes the object of a nationwide hunt, along with his more outgoing best friend, Kirby Cooper-Quinn, and their mysterious but rather maladroit savior, a young Native American woman from New Mexico out of her element. Action periodically returns to the 1945 backstory of Eleanor and her #MeToo–type dealings with sleazy military brass (World War II Americans don’t exactly earn their “Greatest Generation” stripes here). Shanahan’s prose is on target throughout, carrying the pursuit-driven story forward as smooth as a bullet’s trajectory, although the mystique of the book’s MacGuffin medallion gets traded in for an explanation that is one of SF’s hoariest clichés. The denouement depends on a revelation of hitherto unknown superpowers that may signal a sequel. The voices of the young characters are especially convincing, with a nice touch that even with his augmented IQ, Hollis remains a firmly ordinary, unprepossessing boy whose reaction to most everything is pretty much “cool.” Even with the violence and swearing, this tale would still rate as YA material (pretty cool stuff, at that), albeit for a precociously cynical adolescent readership with no trust in government authorities except as killers.
Heightened storytelling and characterization uplift a familiar spies-chase-superpowered-kid premise. (author bio)Pub Date: June 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64599-046-8
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Encircle Publications, LLC
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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