Lucky is the reader who follows Alexander’s warrior-hero through this stirring Martian escapade.
In Alexander’s SF adventure, a disillusioned war veteran joins an expedition to restore a battle-destroyed Mars colony.
Leif Grettison is an astronaut and former military pilot in the far future. For most of humankind, it is the year 2726, but Leif hails from an older age; his repeat sorties into deep space (in suspended animation) and back, given the ironies of Einsteinian relativity, mean that his returns to Earth are separated by eras, giving him celebrity status as “Starman” Leif the Lucky. After a depressing first contact adventure with an extinct alien civilization, Leif returns to an Earth ravaged by the “Tribulation,” a solar system–wide war fought by opposing forces using deadly computer malware and viruses (that may still post a threat). More than 400 years after his last return, a new North American order, the Commonalty, embraces Leif as a returned hero. Future humanity is obsessed with a legend that tells of a Mars-colony complex, now lifeless, in which a young science prodigy named Oksana Vasylyshyn made a momentous scientific advance before being engulfed by the Tribulation. Now, an international coalition gives Leif and other representatives roles in a mission to Mars, ostensibly to reactivate the ancient, corpse-strewn (but still viable) colony for resettlement. But indications that a Chinese raid caused the community’s demise, as well as confirmation that “Martian Girl” Oksana really did exist, turn the project into a treasure hunt for Oksana’s discovery, a mystery prize of great strategic value. Much of the narrative is devoted to a Ben Bova/Kim Stanley Robinson–like hard SF account of rehabbing a Mars habitat. Grettison, introduced in Starman’s Saga(2019), is an ingratiating hero-narrator, an intelligent tough guy haunted by guilt, ghosts, and lost love while plunging ahead with a fatalist personal code (“This is a bad time to be philosophical, Leif. Deal with the situation in front of you”). Leif the Lucky is a battle-weary action hero disillusioned by power struggles, senseless cruelty, and petty nationalism, and he’s capable of being deadly when he has to. The story’s resolution, while feeling a little truncated, has particular strength and emotional weight; it rises above the norm in space-suited interplanetary thrillers.
Lucky is the reader who follows Alexander’s warrior-hero through this stirring Martian escapade.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798990585300
Page Count: 470
Publisher: Alton Kremer
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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