A rich and philosophical novel in the vein of classic SF.
A bookseller works to radicalize genetically engineered slaves in Apricot’s dystopian SF novel.
In the future, humanity employs a new type of servant, designed and manufactured by the Edison Angelics Corporation. Their “angels” aren’t born but rather hatch out of eggs, and they come equipped to perform a number of tasks, including sex work, housekeeping, and animal companionship. Housewife Mary Standish simply wants a nanny for her soon-to-born baby, but her husband, John, resents the very existence of angels—he’s a member of the fascistic Human Supremacy Party—and, as a sergeant in the Militia, he is charged with keeping them in their place. Even so, it doesn’t take long for John to turn their angel, Nara, into his sexual slave. Nara, feeling suicidal, visits a place she’s heard whispers of, a strange bookshop in the old, war-ravaged section of town—a place just for angels. There, she meets Robert Hedrock, proprietor of the Book Depository, a combination safehouse and academy for angels who have experienced the cruelty of humans. Hedrock’s angelic beneficiaries include Alexander, a manual laborer turned violent criminal who, after being imprisoned for 12 years in one of Hedrock’s reading rooms, reforms himself into a revolutionary leader; Arthur, a government accountant on the run after uncovering evidence of corruption among his human bosses (he decides to find a human lawyer and take his case before the courts); and Duchess Olivia Van Degarde, an angel who manages to pass as a human. Hedrock has his own secrets: Not only is he a roughly 250-year-old angel himself—he happens to know that the head of the Edison Angelics Corporation, Martin Remington, is one as well. Can Hedrock ensure that all of the “children of the Egg,” from Nara (or Uma, she renames herself) to Remington, free themselves and play their part in the Great Story?
Apricot’s episodic novel reveals its world and characters slowly. Each chapter or set of chapters reads almost like a self-contained story dealing with some aspect of the problems faced by angels. The premise has obvious parallels to American chattel slavery—some of the angels even speak in a Southern-like dialect—though the setting of Kipling Shire also bears some resemblance to the British Raj. The author slips in several nods to other dystopian works. (One of the possible roles for angels is listed as “Handmaiden”: “This activation creates a docile and sexually submissive role-player who wants to serve a commander or dominant male figure. Authorized for Neo-Christian use. Unavailable in some jurisdictions.”) There are brief moments of shocking physical and sexual violence—shocking in part because the book’s overall tone is closer to that of a Ray Bradbury story. Apricot dramatizes the processes of exploitation and liberation with ingenuity and humor. He reminds readers, especially, of the centrality of books in expanding our notions of who we are and who we might be, and in doing so he places himself in the fine tradition of idealistic speculative fiction.
A rich and philosophical novel in the vein of classic SF.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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