A fine sci-fi adventure for readers who like to get lost in foreign worlds.
A peaceful kingdom on an alien planet faces a threat from crystals that can control people’s dreams in the authors’ sci-fi debut, the first in a planned trilogy.
The inhabitants of Gandara seem to have found peace, thanks in large part to dream crystals that can stimulate positive traits, such as “artistic inspiration.” However, the stones can also be manipulated for other ends—as Zanoah, the son of Gandara’s ruler, soon learns, when he realizes that his father may be altering the crystals to influence people’s thoughts. When Zanoah attempts to stop his father, it leads to a tragic event that leaves the kingdom in disarray. All the crystals are destroyed, but nearly a year later, more of them are found in a mine. A small group, including Zanoah’s love interest, Anlee, and Master Scholar Tannok, devise a plan to obliterate the stones for good. The story eases readers into an unfamiliar world with terminology that’s easy to understand in context; “dromas,” for example, are animals that resemble both camels and horses, and a “Na’reena” is essentially a queen. The desert setting creates a stunning ambience of desolation and isolation, which increases the intensity of later scenes, when merciless nomads pursue the heroes through the arid wasteland. The story’s best characters are shrouded in mystery: The Hitam Movement, which demands equality for everyone in the kingdom, is led by the Mal’Hitam, whose identity is initially kept secret; and Aquila Mathias, a monk who has prophetic dreams, later comes to play an important role in the narrative. The ending, in which the main characters try to save Gandara from almost certain doom, opts to leave some questions unresolved—perhaps for the sequel. There’s a “guide” to Gandara at the end, but it’s not a necessity, as McGary and Faiola-Petersen make all the story’s components, from characters to animal names, abundantly clear.
A fine sci-fi adventure for readers who like to get lost in foreign worlds.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499361544
Page Count: 556
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2014
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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