Unambitious time-travel SF that doesn’t push many boundaries—except those of the Macedonian Empire.
A student and his professor stumble across the secret of time travel and journey back to the era of Alexander the Great to try to rewrite history.
In 2026, American college student Derek assists professor Kibble with a high-speed spinning gizmo for processing honey and inadvertently discovers the secret to moving backward in time. Soon the pair have a unit that’s large enough to accommodate passengers and can be carried on a helicopter. Things are looking dire on the geopolitical scene, as a nuclear war looms involving Iran, Russia, China, and Western democracies. Derek and Kibble decide to rewrite history and create a unified, pro-freedom European superpower in the past to align with the United States. The key, determines Kibble, is Alexander the Great, who died at the age of 32 of a fluke illness in 323 B.C.E. after conquering and uniting much of the known world—which all came undone without him. Along with researcher Lex, the team travels to ancient Macedonia and explains everything to a sympathetic Alexander (who improbably takes the existence of time travelers in stride). He minds his health and uses the helicopter and guns imported from 2026 to firm up his empire and survive. But when the Americans return to the future, they find a dystopian police state. With more trips, including one back to the North American continent of 60,000 B.C.E., can the heroes do a reset good enough to make truth, justice, and the American way prevail? In Ray Bradbury’s 1952 story “A Sound of Thunder,” a careless time traveler steps on a butterfly eons ago and completely changes Earth’s history; Busby, who previously wrote Lost in Time: Trapped in a Prehistoric World (2019), has his characters in this SF adventure practically stomp metaphorical butterflies beneath their feet. For a while, it seems as if readers will get a darker tale akin to Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1971 novel The Lathe of Heaven, in which repeated godlike meddling makes reality more twisted and worse, but ultimately this is a utopian fantasy. However, it’s one that’s hampered by simplistic language and dialogue (“What I say around here goes. My word is the law!”), broad-brush characterizations, and naïve science.
Unambitious time-travel SF that doesn’t push many boundaries—except those of the Macedonian Empire.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79605-754-6
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Xlibris Corp
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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