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 huge, churning, relentlessly entertaining melodrama buoyed by confidence that human values will prevail.
A rare, rattling space opera—first of a trilogy, or series, from Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck).
Humanity colonized the solar system out as far as Neptune but then exploration stagnated. Straight-arrow Jim Holden is XO of an ice-hauler swinging between the rings of Saturn and the mining stations of the Belt, the scattered ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. His ship's captain, responding to a distress beacon, orders Holden and a shuttle crew to investigate what proves to be a derelict. Holden realizes it's some sort of trap, but an immensely powerful, stealthed warship destroys the ice-hauler, leaving Holden and the shuttle crew the sole survivors. This unthinkable act swiftly brings Earth, with its huge swarms of ships, Mars with its less numerous but modern and powerful navy, and the essentially defenseless Belt to the brink of war. Meanwhile, on the asteroid Ceres, cynical, hard-drinking detective Miller—we don't find out he has other names until the last few pages—receives orders to track down and "rescue"—i.e. kidnap—a girl, Julie Mao, who rebelled against her rich Earth family and built an independent life for herself in the Belt. Julie is nowhere to be found but, as the fighting escalates, Miller discovers that Julie's father knew beforehand that hostilities would occur. Now obsessed, Miller continues to investigate even when he loses his job—and the trail leads towards Holden, the derelict, and what might prove to be a horrifying biological experiment. No great depth of character here, but the adherence to known physical laws—no spaceships zooming around like airplanes—makes the action all the more visceral. And where Corey really excels is in conveying the horror and stupidity of interplanetary war, the sheer vast emptiness of space and the amorality of huge corporations.
A huge, churning, relentlessly entertaining melodrama buoyed by confidence that human values will prevail.Pub Date: June 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-12908-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
This brilliant bit of nihilism succeeds where so many self-described transgressive novels do not: It's dangerous because...
Brutal and relentless debut fiction takes anarcho-S&M chic to a whole new level—in a creepy, dystopic, confrontational novel that's also cynically smart and sharply written.
Palahniuk's insomniac narrator, a drone who works as a product recall coordinator, spends his free time crashing support groups for the dying. But his after-hours life changes for the weirder when he hooks up with Tyler Durden, a waiter and projectionist with plans to screw up the world—he's a "guerilla terrorist of the service industry." "Project Mayhem" seems taken from a page in The Anarchist Cookbook and starts small: Durden splices subliminal scenes of porno into family films and he spits into customers' soup. Things take off, though, when he begins the fight club—a gruesome late-night sport in which men beat each other up as partial initiation into Durden's bigger scheme: a supersecret strike group to carry out his wilder ideas. Durden finances his scheme with a soap-making business that secretly steals its main ingredient—the fat sucked from liposuction. Durden's cultlike groups spread like wildfire, his followers recognizable by their open wounds and scars. Seeking oblivion and self-destruction, the leader preaches anarchist fundamentalism: "Losing all hope was freedom," and "Everything is falling apart"—all of which is just his desperate attempt to get God's attention. As the narrator begins to reject Durden's revolution, he starts to realize that the legendary lunatic is just himself, or the part of himself that takes over when he falls asleep. Though he lands in heaven, which closely resembles a psycho ward, the narrator/Durden lives on in his flourishing clubs.
This brilliant bit of nihilism succeeds where so many self-described transgressive novels do not: It's dangerous because it's so compelling.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03976-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
BOOK TO SCREEN
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