Indelible characters will draw readers into this thrilling futuristic yarn.
A bounty hunter and a librarian pursue a group of rebels in a bid to rescue a bureaucrat’s abducted niece in Alexander’s SF adventure, one in a series.
On the planet Offyonder, hundreds of light years from Earth, CenSec (Central Security) enlists Martin Allgeier for a special mission. The “modest” third assistant librarian is an obscure fellow, making him an ideal candidate to track down Claire Montaigne, who’s missing and presumably kidnapped. She’s the niece of the planetary government’s Director and called “the Princess,” a seemingly honorary title. Martin hires a female bounty hunter named Sol to help find Claire. They traverse such Offyonder towns as coal-polluted Bannion (which Martin calls the planet’s “armpit”) and the ominously named Edge-of-the-World. The evasive rebel leader Spartacus and his Spartacists, the likely abductors, aren’t Martin and Sol’s only threat, as Offyonder is rife with crime and corruption. The duo chases down leads and faces off against thuggish types, all in the hope of reaching Claire in time. A full-bodied cast and setting highlights Alexander’s sophomore series installment, which is set in the same universe as Complicated: The Interstellar Life and Times of Saoirse Kenneally (2021). Detailing the rich locales, the author showcases pithy writing, like this description of the stacked buildings in Edge-of-the-World: “Building up was preferable to spreading out, because the presence of people and business brought bandits the way garbage brings rats.” Despite the dense worldbuilding, the story moves at a steady clip and delivers several tense sequences. The mystery element of the narrative is relatively light, as it generally consists of Martin and Sol questioning people and running into various kinds of trouble, but the final act kicks everything up a few notches with surprising turns and an ending that lingers.
Indelible characters will draw readers into this thrilling futuristic yarn.Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9798990585324
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Alton Kremer
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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