A relatable protagonist, a believable journey of self-discovery, and a wild SF world.
In this SF sequel, a young woman’s belief that superheroes do more harm than good takes a dark turn.
When Alyssa Henson arrives by taxi to the Pacific Coast city of Olympus, where she’s about to start a job as a dental hygienist, she’s annoyed by the reason traffic is at a standstill. Crowds are staring up at the sky, where superheroes Ultra Woman, Mr. Amazing, and Fantastic Man—collectively known as the Terrific Trio—are battling evil unicorns. The sight of a little girl, whose gawking parents are oblivious to their daughter’s precarious perch on a rail overlooking the ocean, just proves Alyssa’s sincere argument that showboating superheroes make the world more perilous, not less. And what if the increase in supervillainy is directly related to the rise of crime fighters with superpowers? (“No weird creatures ever bothered the Earth before superheroes became a thing,” she’s convinced.) Sherrier’s sequel to his creative YA SF novel The Flying Woman (2018) revisits an imaginative world where contemporary city life gets transformed by alternative dimensions and select human beings’ sudden acquisitions of random, unearthly powers. The author’s world is not only outrageously wacky (supervillain powers are reflected in such names as The Candelabra, The Fish Slayer, and The Looking Glass, and an upside-down dimension is peopled by sentient monkeys), but chillingly dark as well. Innocent people are injured and killed during attacks and battles, deliberately and inadvertently, and archsupervillain Doctor Hades’ torture lab is a nightmare. Yet the sequel is also thoughtfully rooted in the realistic emotional journeys of Alyssa and her friends, some of whom have their own secrets. Alyssa’s estrangement from her parents is all too understandable; so is the fact that dreams unrealized have affected her and her best friend, Miranda. When Alyssa’s painful encounter with a zombie unicorn’s horn gives her the potential to eliminate superpowers from both villains and heroes, leading to a disturbing moral dilemma, she must wrestle with what she is in danger of becoming herself. In the end, how Alyssa fares comes in tandem with the explosive disappearance of a few main characters, a welcome hint that there is more to come for the inhabitants of Sherrier’s Olympus and beyond.
A relatable protagonist, a believable journey of self-discovery, and a wild SF world.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-40144-724-1
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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
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