An intriguing but troubling tale of an android assassin careening through a dangerous life.
A killer android finds himself wrestling with the emotional demons of humanity in this debut novel.
In this tale set in the near future, Memory12 has created sentient androids who think and look like humans. Assassin, ICQA-1037 was the last android built by Dr. M. Cove, who made him a defective abomination meant to bring down Memory12, which forced out the scientist. “Icy” (as the android’s few friends call him) uncovers his history in contradictory bursts of memories, so he can never be certain what to believe. Cletus, a terrorist, thief, and “black-market specialist,” encourages him to keep killing with the promise of a fortune after the Pink Gallery (Memory12’s secret division) is exposed. After months stuck in a beach house, Icy discovers Cletus is lying about his motivations, and the android wipes out the thug, going on the run. Desperate, Icy calls despised gangster Stacy, the employer of the android’s best friend, A3-11, for help. Stacy agrees to extricate Icy as long as he becomes an enforcer for the criminal. For a time, Icy enjoys a normal life (well, normal for a murderous android). But with his chaotic mind, he can’t help but revert to his violent ways. Leite’s imaginative tale offers a striking futuristic setting, a thought-provoking premise, and many rich, evocative details. Unfortunately, the author has created a problem by employing Icy as both his antihero and narrator. Icy isn’t a likable character, having the worst human traits, including being both violent and lustful. His paranoia is understandable because it’s impossible for him to tell whom he can trust. This results in no memorable supporting characters. His malfunctioning brain affects the narrative, as readers won’t be able to tell what’s real and what’s fantasy, which they will likely find frustrating (and must mirror how Icy feels). The powers manipulating Icy never come out of the shadows, and opportunities for the android’s redemption are scarce, a depressing situation for a main character who seems to be heading straight for oblivion.
An intriguing but troubling tale of an android assassin careening through a dangerous life.Pub Date: May 17, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 257
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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