Nefarious bigwigs, collusion, and galactic jumps against a cosmic backdrop; readers should definitely want to come back for...
Interstellar travel is possible in the early 22nd century thanks to a much-desired element that one company controls and others will go to great lengths to take in this debut sci-fi adventure.
TV production assistant Mandisa “Mandi” Nkosi may have a story for her network, courtesy of an anonymous source. Someone’s contacted her with pertinent information about uranium (surrounding a terror plot). Mandi meets Anonymous, who tells of a possible conspiracy that includes the idea that the uranium didn’t originate on Earth but rather Eridani. That planet is where Applied Interstellar Corporation is establishing its headquarters. AIC first discovered hyperium on Saturn’s moon, Hyperion. The element is capable of opening wormholes for traversing star systems. CEO Jans Mikel’s moved AIC to Eridani to put distance between the company and Earth’s Euramerican Coalition government, which wants its shady hands on hyperium. In the last year, five of AIC’s ships have inexplicably vanished, but an emergency jump pod from the most recent vessel suggests a deliberate attack. Back on Earth, someone, it seems, tries to kill Mandi, likely wanting the data chip from her source. She’s saved by Grae Raymus of AIC Security and tags along on the return flight to Eridani, where trouble’s brewing. A sinister group may be targeting Helios, a moon richer in hyperium than Hyperion and which Jans has been keeping secret. Beyer opens his series with a punch, establishing his prospective universe while simultaneously delivering sci-fi action. A chase sequence on Earth and an explosive confrontation on Eridani are exhilarating, but dirty politicking of the future proves most engrossing, particularly Coalition Assemblyman/former Tech Standard Incorporated CEO Gregory Andrews. He’s clearly manipulating the Euramerican president like a puppet, while his suggestion of an ACI-TSI merger may be legitimate. Copious subplots are left unresolved, not the least of which is Mandi’s parents: a father who’s a mystery to her and mom Gisela, who abandoned her as a child but whom everyone, even Grae, apparently knows. There is, however, an unmistakable antagonist threatening Jans and AIC by the end, as well as a big reveal that demands a sequel.
Nefarious bigwigs, collusion, and galactic jumps against a cosmic backdrop; readers should definitely want to come back for more.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5301-6408-0
Page Count: 366
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2016
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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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