After a strong opening, this gamer-oriented adventure increasingly resembles its first-person-shooter inspirations.
A disgraced security operative in the space-going 22nd century finds a new calling as a gladiator-style warrior in Sugralinov’s SF novel.
Carter Riley is hired to provide security for a corporate-backed Mars expedition that expects big things from an astounding find: a cube-shaped container of nonhuman origin, left on the red planet by an ancient, unknown civilization dubbed the “Precursors.” But the scientists ignore Riley’s warnings to not recklessly meddle with the relic, and some nasty things get unleashed that literally tear the expedition apart. Quick shooting and mech armor (barely effective under the circumstances) leave a mangled Carter the only one alive, rendered comatose for long months. In dreams, he receives a mysterious message: “The first of his kind shall be rewarded...” By the time unsympathetic authorities have revived Carter (with the cheapest possible replacement for his missing arm) and scapegoat him for the deaths, the artifact has been decoded and has absolutely transformed humanity. It seems that the unseen Precursors established a vast space-station array (called Sidus) in the center of the Milky Way galaxy; here, civilizations worthy enough to translate their glyphs and technology can send representatives to mingle and share culture in a regulated, no-danger/no-fatalities environment. Curiously, however, this society revolves around ritual combat in gladiatorial-style games, where force-fields and other super-science measures ensure that everyone survives even the most vicious bouts. Combatants, successful or not, accrue points and new abilities and modifications; others profit from viewership and fight promotion. Carter, a near-unemployable outcast on Earth, divorced by his faithless wife, somehow knows that, as the “first of his kind” to encounter Precursor consciousness personally, his destiny must somehow lead him to Sidus. An attempt to get there via space-mining scut work gets him aboard a transport that is hijacked by space pirates—in the process, however, Carter assembles a core team of fellow desperate types, setting the stage for unexpected adventures.
The author, launching a series with this volume, is established in the realm of online-gamer-oriented SF called “litRPG”—the genre’s most famous exponent is Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, 2011). Sugralinov has an assured voice, in the manner of Alan Dean Foster or even Robert Heinlein; the early pages introducing the much-abused, tough-but-ethical protagonist portend a potentially darker and more serious narrative before thrusting the ensemble (which includes a skirmish-ready pet hamster) into the arenas and weapons shops of the Sidus gamer-heaven environment. But once the characters are ensconced in Sidus, the plot focuses more on ranking battle statistics, insider tips, and the storytelling equivalent of cheat codes (“The Raptorians’ wave modulators emitted a barely perceptible, but rapidly growing hum a second before they fired. Knowing that, I could tumble sharply to one side by reflex, dodging the shot.”) The sexual material is mild (PG-13 at its spiciest), and the violence is cartoonish. The target audience should enjoy the result, even if the story doesn’t end so much as it just comes to a stop, promising a sequel.
After a strong opening, this gamer-oriented adventure increasingly resembles its first-person-shooter inspirations.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2023
ISBN: 9788076931794
Page Count: 502
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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