A deep dive into recognizable SF territory that’s made compelling by rich characterizations and details.
In this third installment of a YA series, a 22nd-century teenager with superpowers plans an escape for an imprisoned friend while trying to navigate the intrigues of a powerful metropolis.
Fantasy/SF author Denault continues the Prodigy Chronicles that she started with Gambit (2015), detailing the 2160 odyssey of Willow Kent. Willow grew up thinking she was a mining village girl in the “Outlying Lands,” far from the advanced and privileged regional capital, the Core. In truth, she is the daughter of one of the Core’s most powerful and feared citizens. Willow was sent away as a baby, part of long-standing machinations involving genetically seeded “prodigies” with varied superpowers. Willow has blossomed into an especially formidable prodigy. Besides wielding telekinesis and force fields, she harbors a sentient inner force/alternative personality she calls “the tiger” and can barely keep leashed. Caging the tiger’s lethal fury becomes a regular thing. Willow, having been brought at last to the Core and its regiments of military elites, aristocrats, and genetically modified creature weapons, finds her loyalties divided among several suitors. There is massive, macho, and merciless Reece, her protector (and sometimes tormentor); Thess, a Core princeling and fellow prodigy, seemingly a nice guy, to whom Willow is pledged in a strategically arranged marriage; and Toby, a shape-shifting “mimic” prodigy who shares the protagonist’s background, values, and a psychic link. Oh, there are other suitors—enough to cast a Japanese anime-fantasy series written by Tolstoy—not to mention a whole insurgent army and “guardians” from another dimension looking to exploit Willow (when the Core isn’t trying to manipulate her). The captivating hero plays a dangerous game with all of them, secretly set on freeing an old friend, now a condemned prisoner. Much of the engaging story’s vibe is familiar, female-fronted, YA dystopia material—the chosen one is faced with a universe of impossible boyfriend and family problems. While progress throughout the saga is slow and intricately detailed, each character manages to have a singular voice. The action scenes, when they finally arrive, will keep readers addicted to turning the pages. Since this book is a third chapter, newcomers will be badly lost without maps.
A deep dive into recognizable SF territory that’s made compelling by rich characterizations and details.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73444-417-9
Page Count: 540
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For those who like their science fiction dense, monumental, and a bit overwrought.
Brown is back with Book 4 of his Red Rising series (Morning Star, 2016, etc.) and explores familiar themes of rebellion, revenge, and political instability.
This novel examines the ramifications and pitfalls of trying to build a new world out of the ashes of the old. The events here take place 10 years after the conclusion of Morning Star, which ended on a seemingly positive note. Darrow, aka Reaper, and his lover, Virginia au Augustus, aka Mustang, had vanquished the Golds, the elite ruling class, so hope was held out that a new order would arise. But in the new book it becomes clear that the concept of political order is tenuous at best, for Darrow’s first thoughts are on the forces of violence and chaos he has unleashed: “famines and genocide...piracy...terrorism, radiation sickness and disease...and the one hundred million lives lost in my [nuclear] war.” Readers familiar with the previous trilogy—and you'll have to be if you want to understand the current novel—will welcome a familiar cast of characters, including Mustang, Sevro (Darrow’s friend and fellow warrior), and Lysander (grandson of the Sovereign). Readers will also find familiarity in Brown’s idiosyncratic naming system (Cassius au Bellona, Octavia au Lune) and even in his vocabulary for cursing (“Goryhell,” “Bloodydamn,” “Slag that”). Brown introduces a number of new characters, including 18-year-old Lyria, a survivor of the initial Rising who gives a fresh perspective on the violence of the new war—and violence is indeed never far away from the world Brown creates. (He includes one particularly gruesome gladiatorial combat between Cassius and a host of enemies.) Brown imparts an epic quality to the events in part by his use of names. It’s impossible to ignore the weighty connotations of characters when they sport names like Bellerephon, Diomedes, Dido, and Apollonius.
For those who like their science fiction dense, monumental, and a bit overwrought.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-425-28591-6
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
A tale that’s at once familiar and full of odd and unexpected twists—vintage King, in other words.
Narnia on the Penobscot: a grand, and naturally strange, entertainment from the ever prolific King.
What’s a person to do when sheltering from Covid? In King’s case, write something to entertain himself while reflecting on what was going on in the world outside—ravaged cities, contentious politics, uncertainty. King’s yarn begins in a world that’s recognizably ours, and with a familiar trope: A young woman, out to buy fried chicken, is mashed by a runaway plumber’s van, sending her husband into an alcoholic tailspin and her son into a preadolescent funk, driven “bugfuck” by a father who “was always trying to apologize.” The son makes good by rescuing an elderly neighbor who’s fallen off a ladder, though he protests that the man’s equally elderly German shepherd, Radar, was the true hero. Whatever the case, Mr. Bowditch has an improbable trove of gold in his Bates Motel of a home, and its origin seems to lie in a shed behind the house, one that Mr. Bowditch warns the boy away from: “ ‘Don’t go in there,’ he said. ‘You may in time, but for now don’t even think of it.’ ” It’s not Pennywise who awaits in the underworld behind the shed door, but there’s plenty that’s weird and unexpected, including a woman, Dora, whose “skin was slate gray and her face was cruelly deformed,” and a whole bunch of people—well, sort of people, anyway—who’d like nothing better than to bring their special brand of evil up to our world’s surface. King’s young protagonist, Charlie Reade, is resourceful beyond his years, but it helps that the old dog gains some of its youthful vigor in the depths below. King delivers a more or less traditional fable that includes a knowing nod: “I think I know what you want,” Charlie tells the reader, "and now you have it”—namely, a happy ending but with a suitably sardonic wink.
A tale that’s at once familiar and full of odd and unexpected twists—vintage King, in other words.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66800-217-9
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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