A smashing, energetic installment in this futuristic series that keeps getting better.
An ex–office worker, banished to a treacherous apartment district, fights to survive thugs and a rogue artificial intelligence in this SF sequel.
Kim once worked at the Artificial Intelligence Company in an AI–run dystopian city. But after drones caught her making loveto a woman named Shan,she was branded a criminal in a future world that rejects any kind of individuality. The punishment was exile in one of the crime-ridden outer districts. Her new apartment and assigned manual-labor job aren’t great, and Kim has never before lived without constant AI assistance or a bot brewing her coffee. She isn’t in District 33 for long before danger tracks her down: A couple of hooligans accost her and continually threaten her in later run-ins. They seem to know too much about her, which makes Kim suspect that someone—or something—is pointing them in her direction. The telltale buzzing sound of a drone overhead indicates it’s likely Kimberly, the AI that Kim created for her old company and that’s since turned against her. Luckily, Kim makes some new friends and scores a side gig as a “pedicabbie,” at which the skilled bicyclist excels. Things take a significant turn when she agrees to a pickup in the elite District 2 and a drop-off somewhere on “the outside”—the ungoverned land just beyond reinforced concrete walls. This ultimately precipitates Kim’s deep dive into virtual reality, which she frequented in her old life. There, she may find a way to fix Kimberly and take a stance against her former employer and the authoritarian Hierarchy.
Stanfill delivers a faster-paced follow-up to series opener Terms of Service(2021)—one in which Kim’s fight briskly moves back and forth between real life and VR. The protagonist also faces more urgent predicaments than she did in the first novel. She’s determined to find Shan, who’s now hiding as a “Blank,” having successfully ditched her ID chip with Kim’s assistance. Moreover, the perpetually hostile thugs keep popping up, and some in Kim’s group of allies think that she may be a traitor. Despite Kim’s reliance on AIs, she manages to roll with life’s punches and adjust to her new circumstances with relative ease. She doesn’t want to kill anyone, but she won’t hesitate to flash her switchblade to ward off a threat. Meanwhile, a fascinating cast surrounds her. Their local language, Panglobal, doesn’t recognize gender, so this “translated” narrative uses only she/her/hers for all characters. Stanfill, as in his earlier book, animates the pages with lucid details, as when Kim visits a nightclub (in the real world): “Spins, lunges, leaps, surges, all the usual moves but stronger, more intense, more vital. She danced as if all the devils of Hell were nipping at her heels. She had nothing left to lose, no future, no past, only the present.” Scenes in VR, however, are equally vibrant all the way until the tale’s ending, which offers surprising resolution.
A smashing, energetic installment in this futuristic series that keeps getting better.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2022
ISBN: 9781638778370
Page Count: 402
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A deceptively quiet beginning rockets to a thrilling finish, preparing us for the next volume’s undoubtedly explosive finale.
The third installment of a necromantic science-fantasy series continues working at puzzles of identity and the meaning of loyalty.
Previously (Gideon the Ninth, 2019; Harrow the Ninth, 2020), sullen but brilliant necromancer Harrowhark consumed the soul of Gideon, her foulmouthed cavalier, to become a Lyctor, a semi-immortal officer in the Emperor Undying’s court. In a desperate attempt to preserve Gideon’s identity, Harrow deliberately erased the other woman from her memories, leaving herself confused to the point of delusion, unable to access her full powers, and vulnerable to enemies both within and without the Emperor’s court. This novel introduces Nona, a sweet but extraordinarily naïve young woman who appears to be in Harrowhark’s body but with Gideon’s golden eyes, lacking both necromantic abilities and any memories prior to six months ago. Nona’s been happy despite her precarious living situation in a war-torn city threatened by the necromantic Houses and their foe, the Blood of Eden. Unfortunately, what fragile peace she has cannot last, and everything depends on recovering Nona’s memories and returning to Harrowhark’s home in the Ninth House, there to finally release the deadly threat lurking in the Locked Tomb. But who is Nona, really: Harrowhark, Gideon, a blend of both young women…or someone else entirely? (The reader will figure it out long before the characters do.) Meanwhile, the Emperor and Harrowhark meet in dreams, where he recounts events of 10,000 years ago, when, as a newly fledged necromancer, his conflict with the corrupt trillionaires who planned to escape the dying Earth and leave the remaining billions to perish led to nuclear apocalypse. It’s pretty gutsy of Muir to write two books in a row about amnesiac characters, particularly when it may very well be the same character experiencing a different form of amnesia in each. This work initially reads like a strange interlude from the series, devoted to Nona’s odd but essentially quotidian routine in the midst of war, riot, and general chaos. But the story gradually gathers speed, and it’s all in service to a deeper plot. It is unfortunate that the demands of that plot mean we’ve gotten a considerably smaller dose of Gideon’s defiantly crude, riotously flouncy behavior in the two books subsequent to the one which bears her name.
A deceptively quiet beginning rockets to a thrilling finish, preparing us for the next volume’s undoubtedly explosive finale.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-25-085411-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tordotcom
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
