A vividly described tale of interplanetary anti-imperialism.
In Hou’s SF novel, residents of a colonized planet struggle to survive in a fight over valuable resources.
At some point in Earth’s future, humanity escapes the dying planet and scatters throughout the universe. A civilization called Stolis uses an artificial star to sustain life; a material called Sol, necessary to feed Stolis’ star, must be mined from planets that Stolis colonizes. The human residents of one such planet, Dezun, attempt to fight back but fail. Twenty-six years later, a revolutionary group again tries to remove the Stolisians from Dezun. The story is told in scattered scenes from assorted third-person perspectives, including those of Stolisian colonizers, Dezuni rebels, and other inhabitants of Dezun who aren’t fully invested with either side. One of the main characters is Lyas, a 17-year-old half-Dezuni, half-Stolisian human hunter raised by his single mother, Inaal. Unbeknownst to Lyas, Inaal was one of the rebel leaders in the initial uprising 26 years earlier. Hou’s short novel manages to work in a lot of worldbuilding. Some characters, such as Lyas, explore Dezun’s physical landscape, which gives Hou a natural way to describe its flora and fauna. Other characters’ stories, such as those of rebel Nakell and colonizer Cerin, allow for discussions of geopolitics. Lyas’ introductory scene has him hunting tollut, which appears to be a deerlike creature; not only does this scene describe the environment, but it also hints at the workings of the world’s economy and provides a sense of Lyas’ character; when he eventually finds a tollut, he not only spares it when he discovers it’s blind and injured, but he also bandages its wounds. During Cerin’s first encounter with Dezun’s environment, Hou’s prose stands out: “The forest before her was thickly enrobed in snow, with not a single spot or branch left untouched by the cold blankets.”
A vividly described tale of interplanetary anti-imperialism.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9798989189908
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Povascha Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
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