In Mackay’s debut military–SF series starter, an endangered alien race makes contact with Earth and asks its inhabitants for a favor.
In 2020, humanity has their first encounter with intergalactic aliens. Lumenarians are humanoid quasi-reptiles who are quite humanlike in their ways and attitudes, and they generously share their technology with Earth. However, they also ask humans for a big favor in return. Their ancient race—which has forgotten its history due to computer-memory failure—is fighting a war against a mysterious, vicious, armor-plated army called the Forsaken, who are conquering and exterminating their distant colonies. The Lumenarians have found that other space-traveling races are mostly peaceful but that technologically primitive humans are a warlike species—so they ask for a volunteer human army to mount an offensive campaign. A group of human veterans and adventure-seekers sign up for the job, and the story’s narration splits between three characters: Will Reach, an alcoholic, physically and psychologically scarred Afghanistan veteran, who’s fitted with cybernetic Lumenarian implants and tactical tech; Sarah Li, an orphaned science genius with command skills who signs up with her brother; and “Arthur,” a prominent Lumenarian who has many secrets. The novel’s scenario isn’t original; John Ringo’s Legacy of the Aldenata series, among other books, has depicted Earth natives serving as military support for embattled extraterrestrials. Mackay takes this premise back to basic training in a big way, however, addressing soldiers’ PTSD and malaise (Joe Haldeman’s classic 1974 novel The Forever War is a stated influence) and their combat strategy (à la Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel Starship Troopers). There’s also some hard–SF physics when Sarah takes over narration duties. In addition to plenty of action, Mackay adds the timely notion of a terroristic human-supremacist movement and reveals the existence of a similar group among the Lumenarians. As the Samuel Taylor Coleridge–inspired title might signify, there are also several literary shout-outs—and a few Lucasfilm hat tips, as well.
A stirring adventure tale that adds considerable shock and awe to a familiar setup.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5255-6727-8
Page Count: 469
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | SCIENCE FICTION
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
79
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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. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
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Strange and fascinating alien-contact yarn, the first of a trilogy from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, young physicist Ye Wenjie helplessly watches as fanatical Red Guards beat her father to death. She ends up in a remote re-education (i.e. forced labor) camp not far from an imposing, top secret military installation called Red Coast Base. Eventually, Ye comes to work at Red Coast as a lowly technician, but what really goes on there? Weapons research, certainly, but is it also listening for signals from space—maybe even signaling in return? Another thread picks up the story 40 years later, when nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao and thuggish but perceptive policeman Shi Qiang, summoned by a top-secret international (!) military commission, learn of a war so secret and mysterious that the military officers will give no details. Of more immediate concern is a series of inexplicable deaths, all prominent scientists, including the suicide of Yang Dong, the physicist daughter of Ye Wenjie; the scientists were involved with the shadowy group Frontiers of Science. Wang agrees to join the group and investigate and soon must confront events that seem to defy the laws of physics. He also logs on to a highly sophisticated virtual reality game called “Three Body,” set on a planet whose unpredictable and often deadly environment alternates between Stable times and Chaotic times. And he meets Ye Wenjie, rehabilitated and now a retired professor. Ye begins to tell Wang what happened more than 40 years ago. Jaw-dropping revelations build to a stunning conclusion. In concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu.
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Categories: SCIENCE FICTION
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