An engaging sequel that crossbreeds established SF characters with a credible extraterrestrial murder mystery.
An American war veteran in the forefront of future space exploration awkwardly turns into a crime investigator when a planetary colony he is replenishing is revealed as a hotbed of intrigue and murder.
In this SF sequel, Alexander continues the chronicles of future tough-guy hero (of Norwegian American descent) Leif Grettison, begun in Starman’s Saga (2019). For newcomers, this caper can largely be savored as a stand-alone. Leif is a battle-scarred veteran of a world conflict whose main intent now is to stay away from a fractious, corrupt Earth that holds no place for a fair-minded, honorable ex-soldier. Yet he repeatedly plays a pivotal role in interstellar hijinks. His formidable one-time enemy/now lover, pilot Yang Yong, wants Leif to accompany her on a routine trip to a newly seeded space colony on a distant hothouse planet ironically called Heaven. They are bringing supplies and fresh pioneers to continue building the beachhead. But arriving on Heaven, Leif finds a polarized, rebellious rabble on the scorching planet (“This heat was like being wrapped in wool blankets and then thrown into a sauna”). It seems the first colonists are actually convicts—runaways, dopers, and shifty Earth refugees. Judging that settling the harsh biome will involve too much uncomfortable work, they are voting to ditch the mission and return home via the supply ship despite the agreement that this was a one-way trip. Leif and company hardly have time to process this when the malcontents’ leader, a much-disliked blackmailer and con man called (pseudonymously) Jerry Whitehead, dies under nonviolent but very suspicious circumstances. Leif finds himself conducting a maladroit Whitehead murder investigation in the middle of a regime change, secrets, lies, politics, and PTSD triggers from all the stuff he thought he left behind. The tale’s whodunit aspect is serviceable, if not spectacular, and relies on a supporting character’s swift (but acceptable) deus ex machina role change. But it’s the solid storytelling, characterization, and fast-paced action that keep this game afoot. Readers who enjoy hard-science SF should be pleased with the biology and worldbuilding elements. And they will perhaps take note that while loads of Alexander’s SF contemporaries have generated many hand-wringing dystopia-o-ramas of global warming, Heaven's climate change has arisen naturally, not due to human industry.
An engaging sequel that crossbreeds established SF characters with a credible extraterrestrial murder mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73619-844-5
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Alton Kremer
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning.
An intrepid teen encounters the dark secrets of the elite in her climate-ravaged world in this translated work from South Korea.
Sixteen-year-old Jeon Chobahm is shocked to learn that Goh Haeri, the beloved reality TV star who happens to be Chobahm’s look-alike, just died by suicide—and also that she’s being asked to become Haeri’s secret replacement. In their frozen, post-apocalyptic world, Chobahm, like everyone around her, leads a bleak life. She bundles up daily against the dangerous cold and toils in a power plant. But now she’ll live Haeri’s cushy life in Snowglobe, an exclusive, glass-dome-enclosed community, where the climate is mild, and the resident actors’ lives are broadcast as entertainment for those in the open world. As glamorous as life there may seem, however, Chobahm quickly learns that there’s a sinister underbelly: People are killed off when they’re no longer useful, and there’s something strange about Haeri’s family dynamics. As she meets a host of new companions, including Yi Bonwhe, the heir of Snowglobe’s founding family, Chobahm discovers a devastating secret and embarks on a risky plan to expose the truth. Climate change, societal inequity, and the ethics of escaping from our own lives by watching others’ are addressed in this intelligent, absorbing book. Chobahm is a complex character inhabiting a strongly developed world, and her compassion, ambition, outrage, and sorrow ring true.
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning. (Dystopian. 12-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593484975
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK TO SCREEN
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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