A thoroughly absorbing SF tale with a motley cast.
In this debut dystopian novel, a teenager fights to rescue her abducted younger sister from the ever increasing perils of a futuristic megacity.
Val Merina has been raising Kat, now 12, since their dad’s death two years ago. They’re on the dole and live in an apartment that Legacy, the “ailing government,” provides. Impoverished citizens’ only other option is to subscribe to (aka live and work in) company-owned Complex properties in the tiered megacity Arc. But subscribers are merely thankless servants save for the richest citizens residing at the top on level 7. After someone suddenly kidnaps Kat, Val gets no help from the police force ArcSec, as she’s out of its jurisdiction. Luckily, she finds an ally in 18-year-old Trevor, who skirts Legacy’s rarely enforced laws. While finding Kat is the objective, Val and Trevor soon question why exactly the girl was a target. Meanwhile, chaos in Arc looms, as the new PASS directive promises to keep people with low social scores out of the wealthier districts. Around the same time, Legacy Administrators pass the DS75 bill, which cuts subsidies for housing by 75%. Angry citizens ultimately gather in Arc—a potential riot that a virus and a possible epidemic exacerbate. Considering its epic length (nearly 700 pages), Enderly’s SF series opener moves at an impressive pace, in part due to regularly shifting narrative perspectives. These include such memorable characters as Val, Trevor, ArcSec Chief Riku Ogunwe, and the mysterious Ray, whose menacing job, among other things, is scaring people into becoming Complex subscribers. Despite a frenzied and twisty final act, the author skillfully manages numerous characters while violence, though potent, is not a frequent occurrence. Quite a few individual fates are left unknown by the end, which, along with the delightfully head-spinning denouement, will surely have readers hankering for another installment.
A thoroughly absorbing SF tale with a motley cast. (dedication, author bio)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 700
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.
This debut novel, the first of a projected trilogy, blends science fiction, fantasy, gothic chiller, and classic house-party mystery.
Gideon Nav, a foundling of mysterious antecedents, was not so much adopted as indentured by the Ninth House, a nearly extinct noble necromantic house. Trained to fight, she wants nothing more than to leave the place where everyone despises her and join the Cohort, the imperial military. But after her most recent escape attempt fails, she finally gets the opportunity to depart the planet. The heir and secret ruler of the Ninth House, the ruthless and prodigiously talented bone adept Harrowhark Nonagesimus, chooses Gideon to serve her as cavalier primary, a sworn bodyguard and aide de camp, when the undying Emperor summons Harrow to compete for a position as a Lyctor, an elite, near-immortal adviser. The decaying Canaan House on the planet of the absent Emperor holds dark secrets and deadly puzzles as well as a cheerfully enigmatic priest who provides only scant details about the nature of the competition...and at least one person dedicated to brutally slaughtering the competitors. Unsure of how to mix with the necromancers and cavaliers from the other Houses, Gideon must decide whom among them she can trust—and her doubts include her own necromancer, Harrow, whom she’s loathed since childhood. This intriguing genre stew works surprisingly well. The limited locations and narrow focus mean that the author doesn’t really have to explain how people not directly attached to a necromantic House or the military actually conduct daily life in the Empire; hopefully future installments will open up the author’s creative universe a bit more. The most interesting aspect of the novel turns out to be the prickly but intimate relationship between Gideon and Harrow, bound together by what appears at first to be simple hatred. But the challenges of Canaan House expose other layers, beginning with a peculiar but compelling mutual loyalty and continuing on to other, more complex feelings, ties, and shared fraught experiences.
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31319-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This brilliant bit of nihilism succeeds where so many self-described transgressive novels do not: It's dangerous because...
Brutal and relentless debut fiction takes anarcho-S&M chic to a whole new level—in a creepy, dystopic, confrontational novel that's also cynically smart and sharply written.
Palahniuk's insomniac narrator, a drone who works as a product recall coordinator, spends his free time crashing support groups for the dying. But his after-hours life changes for the weirder when he hooks up with Tyler Durden, a waiter and projectionist with plans to screw up the world—he's a "guerilla terrorist of the service industry." "Project Mayhem" seems taken from a page in The Anarchist Cookbook and starts small: Durden splices subliminal scenes of porno into family films and he spits into customers' soup. Things take off, though, when he begins the fight club—a gruesome late-night sport in which men beat each other up as partial initiation into Durden's bigger scheme: a supersecret strike group to carry out his wilder ideas. Durden finances his scheme with a soap-making business that secretly steals its main ingredient—the fat sucked from liposuction. Durden's cultlike groups spread like wildfire, his followers recognizable by their open wounds and scars. Seeking oblivion and self-destruction, the leader preaches anarchist fundamentalism: "Losing all hope was freedom," and "Everything is falling apart"—all of which is just his desperate attempt to get God's attention. As the narrator begins to reject Durden's revolution, he starts to realize that the legendary lunatic is just himself, or the part of himself that takes over when he falls asleep. Though he lands in heaven, which closely resembles a psycho ward, the narrator/Durden lives on in his flourishing clubs.
This brilliant bit of nihilism succeeds where so many self-described transgressive novels do not: It's dangerous because it's so compelling.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03976-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
BOOK TO SCREEN
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