by Daniel Jeffries ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2013
A vigorous, visionary and steamy cybernoir crime story with a convincing far-future setting.
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In this debut sci-fi novel set in the 25th century, police detective Durante Hoskin must unmask a fiendish high-tech serial killer whose crimes against the corrupt superrich threaten to spark social chaos.
Jeffries isn’t the first sci-fi writer to project a hard-boiled detective story into the future; Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel (1954) wasn’t even the first such tale, nor was the film Blade Runner (1982). However, here he presents a cranked-up-to-11 vision of the mean streets of the future—a post-singularity world of para-human cyborgs, similar to that imagined by futurist Ray Kurzweil. The story takes place on a planetoid-vast, traveling “Starship Settlement,” home to a space-going culture that’s heavily class-stratified: opulent and slum-ridden, decadent and dynastic. Nearly everyone is wet-wired into online and person-to-person communication; radical body modification is routine, and centurieslong human lifespans are further boosted by “blackbox” recorders, allowing people to “relife” themselves from stored data. Yet even in this environment, a murderer at large knows how to strike stealthily through invisible oceans of security minicams, permanently kill the best protected of the elite and spread propaganda of his crimes. On the case is Hoskin, a veteran police detective who’s considered old-fashioned for his habit of physically working out instead of letting nano-bots tone his body from the inside, like everyone else does. Early on, readers get the news that the killer is Venadrik, a brilliant but psychopathic son of a prostitute, whose horrific childhood and messianic religion has set him on a mission to overturn society. Once readers acclimate to the shock of the far-future tech, the book telegraphs the trick Venadrik uses in his serial slayings rather obviously. But the momentum of the storyline and the comfortable noir genre tropes—including a sublimely seductive bad-girl heroine and a young, brash cop partner in trouble—sweep the reader along. The escalating levels of mayhem and weaponry near the end practically transform the book from a sci-fi whodunit to a military-combat action thriller. Although this tale is billed as the first installment in the author’s Age of Transcendence series, it wraps up neatly, like a stand-alone.
A vigorous, visionary and steamy cybernoir crime story with a convincing far-future setting.Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490330723
Page Count: 310
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by TJ Klune ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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by Leigh Bardugo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2019
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
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New York Times Bestseller
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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by Leigh Bardugo ; illustrated by Dani Pendergast
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