by Damien Lutz ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2016
A multilayered protagonist and stellar setting help guide this sci-fi narrative to an unforgettable coda.
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In 2040, a former convict with an implant to stave off violent impulses finds himself in the midst of a plan to take down a corporate empire in Lutz’s (Book Hunter, 2015, etc.) sci-fi thriller.
It’s been a year since Andre Cross left prison early after agreeing to get a device implanted in his neck that counters his destructive urges by inducing euphoria. He works at a farm that produces Neura, a drug that’s part of a health plan for wealthy citizens in a place called Upper Brulle. Andre’s maintenance job pays him in credits and doses of Neura, but because the implant prevents him from taking the drug, he sells it legally for even more credits. He’s hoping to earn enough to buy a ticket to the utopian city of Anchora. And there’s a chance he could expedite his departure: his preferred customer, Finn, suggests that Andre could swipe a large haul of Neura for a bulk sale. Andre’s subsequent attempt results in his capture by members of the Heart of Grace, a cult that opposes Neura’s owner and creator, a company called Titan. The cultists force Andre to help them infect Upper Brulleans with zilla, a potentially lethal Neura/painkiller combo. The ex-con draws on whatever he can, including his newfound feelings for a female PrePAC (android) named Mo Da, to ensure he lives to see Anchora. Lutz’s story tackles the common sci-fi theme of a robot experiencing emotions. But Andre’s apparent tenderness toward Mo Da is equally complex; he also struggles to subvert the “dark thing” that drives him to violence, even as the implant practically turns him into a zombie. His back story, which involves a not-so-nice older brother, is dramatic and laced with mystery. Characters range from pleasantly ambiguous to dangerously blunt; for example, Kade, cult leader Elron’s right-hand man, doesn’t even try to hide his animosity toward Andre. Technology circa 2040 is chic but believable, particularly Andre’s harness for handling maintenance, which is constructed out of robotic arms. This tech is the subject of one of many visually enticing illustrations, courtesy of Lutz and debut illustrator Gray.
A multilayered protagonist and stellar setting help guide this sci-fi narrative to an unforgettable coda.Pub Date: June 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9946275-0-6
Page Count: 380
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Damien Lutz
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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