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
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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