A gripping futuristic tale with a strong cast.
In this third installment of an SF series, a smart and capable political/ecological consultant balances her personal life with her efforts to thwart global threats.
Electra Kittner’s “lightning brain” affords her superior intelligence and physical prowess. By 2162, she’s developed several personas, most notably Irani Ramani, the name that most people call her. Irani is essentially the strategist, and though the personas regularly converse, Electra usually takes control if action is necessary. After resigning from their Health and Human Services secretary position in Washington, D.C., the “Irani-Electra duo” has more time for personal activities. The two, for starters, return to their “Big Sister” role for Tiana Diamond, a 14-year-old teenager who was hospitalized after a car crash that killed her dad. Irani takes tea to her home and cares for her, not unlike how Electra looks after her four cloned children—two sets of twins who don’t know they’re the woman’s clones. At the same time, Irani goes back to her job as director of multipartner projects at George Washington University. She works with professor Jonathan Segal, who’s both intrigued by the possibility of extraterrestrials and scouring the seabed to witness the captivating marine life, especially octopuses and squids. She also puts together an android project that she can complete with her always reliable, self-aware artificial intelligence, Indira. Eventually, another persona, Alisha, resurfaces; she’s a bit more relaxed than the other two, which makes her ideal for gatherings with friends and clone kids. Unfortunately, old enemies are still out there, like a band of political extremists. Members of this group are surely the ones chasing Irani/Electra on a jet ski and a dirt bike, forcing the tougher persona to take the reins.
Ratza’s latest volume, like the preceding ones, practically bursts with characters and subplots. There are, for example, copious diagrams and bulleted lists from presentations by Irani as well as the clone children Eve and Nari, who have become consultants. The clones have their own stories: Eve assists with presidential campaign videos, and Nari champions “Quantum Politics,” which employs the philosophy of meritocracy (“People get what they deserve”). Not all of these threads mesh, and readers may struggle to find a subplot that actually pushes the tale forward. Regardless, many of the smaller storylines are entertaining, including Irani’s slowly building relationship with Jonathan, who introduces an octopus family to her. In the book’s most memorable turn, Irani/Electra takes on a shark who threatens these octopuses, who later return the favor when a stranger goes after Irani. Irani and Jonathan’s trips to the seafloor in an autonomous underwater vehicle evoke vibrant prose, as they pass a marching “army of crabs” and “elongated strings of glowing jellyfish” in the pitch-black ocean. While Ratza gives most of the cast space to shine, one significant character’s disappearance in the latter half has surprisingly little impact, while two new players act as virtual replacements for the missing individual. But this entry has its share of explosive moments, like an unexpected death, and culminates in a shocking cliffhanger that suggests the series is far from over.
A gripping futuristic tale with a strong cast.Pub Date: April 11, 2022
ISBN: 979-8886224085
Page Count: 484
Publisher: PageTurner Press and Media LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
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
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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