A familiar story of dystopic, post-apocalyptic anarchy that’s enlivened by superior storytelling and horrendous monsters.
Leon, a warrior-savage in the year 2203, ritually hones his survival skills on a dying Earth, waiting for rescue by space aliens—before he learns that the truth about his society is vastly different from what he’d been taught.
Irish author Pike makes an impressive debut with a horror-tinged sci-fi tale that’s set generations after multiple disasters ravaged the Earth. Deadly solar flares were followed by acidic rain (nicknamed “Old Sally”), social chaos, and wars that involved both conventional and biological weapons. People from the collapsing civilization sent an SOS into space that begged for help from any listening extraterrestrials. And, amazingly, an answer came. Much later, in a harsh “True Path” survival compound, faithful warrior Leon practices violent rituals in obedience to the “five Messages”—the supposed responses by the aliens. They dictate that only the toughest and least sentimental humans can be saved. Leon begins his ultimate test—the ceremonial hunt for a captured human—and he finds that his prey is an exceptionally resourceful woman. She manages to elude Leon and his team, at least temporarily. Then it turns out that strangers, armed with guns, are also after her. Leon’s long-sought ritual destiny falls into shambles when he hears about different versions and interpretation of the Messages. In a landscape filled with danger, he finds himself rudderless. In the company of a single companion, he heads for a supposedly extinct city where salvation may (or may not) await them. Pike’s work initially falls in line with other novels’ depictions of future feudalism, barbarism, and hapless wandering, such as Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in which the many details of a past apocalypse abide only in shadow and suggestion. The author flavors his dialogue with colorful, multilingual loanwords (such as “Doghru Yol”), often from the Russian and Turkish languages, which is apt for the vaguely European landscape; however, such linguistic flourishes add little clarity to the proceedings. Still, Pike keeps up a compelling, even relentless pace thanks in part to the midnarrative introduction of creatures called “worms”—loathsome invertebrate parasites that have the ability to turn humans into deformed, zombielike things that could have shambled right out of the horror novels of Clive Barker, James Herbert, or Shaun Hutson: “It gathers itself, lurches at me again, puckering a lipless mouth between vast, mounded cheeks. Its tongue writhes around the colourless rim where its lips ought to be.” Leon turns out to have a few tricks up his sleeve, literally, and what starts out as a straightforward quest narrative eventually encompasses creature-feature splatterpunk. However, the book’s explanations and exposition are more often implied than stated—by narrator Leon or anyone else. Leon, for his part, proves to be an intriguing mix of trained killer and deluded disciple. Readers who liked the amorphous enigmas of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy may find this novel to be a similarly tantalizing tale.
A familiar story of dystopic, post-apocalyptic anarchy that’s enlivened by superior storytelling and horrendous monsters.Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78849-040-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: The O’Brien Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.
A teenage orphan enters a curious school and encounters mysteries and dangerous secrets in this first installment of a debut YA fantasy series.
Life in Croswald is about to change for 16-year-old orphan Ivy, a lowly castle maid in charge of the kitchen “scaldrons,” oven-heating, fire-breathing dragons. Fleeing the castle after a messy scaldron mishap, Ivy hops a strange conveyance that transports her to a school for potential quill-wielding, spell-casting “scrivenists.” (The author’s creative language—students are “sqwinches,” and “hairies” are lanterns housing fairies with luminous hair—is one of the book’s pleasures.) Learning that there is more to her gift for sketching than she realized, Ivy studies spells and the magical properties of inks and quills, but strange things keep happening. Why is an old scrivenist, long thought dead, working in secret? Why is the head of the oddly familiar school moving paintings to the “Forgetting Room” so that no one will remember they existed? How can Ivy get a look at a certain journal stored there, and what does it have to do with her recurrent dream? And why has Ivy drawn the interest of the Dark Queen of Croswald and her truly fearsome Cloaked Brood? The intrigue is layered with such whimsical inventions as one school lunchroom run by ghostly bad cooks and another by a jester who is best avoided, scrivenists who end their lives as tomes in a library, and small houses pulled by a gargantuan flying beast with its own weather system. Yes, there are many Harry Potter–ish elements: a school for young wand-wielders, quirky shops dealing in enchanted student supplies, eccentric characters, spells gone wrong, an evil pursuer. But Night’s blend of magic, danger, and suspense (and a touch of steampunk) is a well-realized, fresh fantasy world all its own, and Ivy is an appealing protagonist of relatable complexity. A few bobbles: Ivy seems to go without food for long stretches; the use of “effected” rather than “affected”; a professor who is both standing and perched on a chair.
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9969486-5-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Stories Untold Press
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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