A thrilling tale that deftly merges sci-fi and Western concepts.
McFatter delivers a complex, philosophical look at the fringes of humanity, memory, and civilization in this debut sci-fi Western.
Miguel Morgan has lost everything—more than once. He’s been taken out of suspended animation by a “Woman in Black” named Alice and her enigmatic master, The Kind Man, and forced to confront how the world has changed since he was put in a stasis pod in 2012. Now Miguel is utterly lost; he’s alone, without the other 46 people who were placed in stasis with him. He remembers little of his life and the old world, before civilization was reduced to its current wasteland, known as the Outfar. But his body and mind, thanks to the stasis process, are stronger than ever. This is fortunate, because he’ll need every bit of his strength, skill, and burgeoning psychic abilities to survive in a harsh world filled with strange and frightening technology, desperate people, and ghoulish cyborgs. When Alice leaves him at a ramshackle settlement, he attempts to help the people there and uncover the mysteries of his past. The resulting revelations threaten to shake the very foundations of this new world. The novel offers an appealing sci-fi tale, featuring humanity on the brink of destruction, managing to survive in the face of impossible odds. What sets it apart, though, is the incorporation of Western genre elements. It’s easy for post-apocalyptic tales to get lost in the weeds of the causes of the apocalypse and the monstrosities left behind, not to mention descriptions of abandoned metropolises. McFatter, however, approaches the setting as a lone frontier—harsh and unforgiving but also beautiful. The narration, and Miguel’s voice in particular, really helps to sell this idea, lending a folksy charm and grit to the more fantastical elements. All in all, the tone and style transform an otherwise competent apocalyptic yarn into a unique treat, boding well for future entries in the series.
A thrilling tale that deftly merges sci-fi and Western concepts.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-980293-02-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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