Polished environmentalist SF whose occasionally New Age-y trappings don’t detract from the thrills and wonder.
In debut author Jeffrey’s SF series starter, war is brewing as a corporate space explorer makes extraordinary discoveries on a newly discovered, Earth-like planet.
By the year 2217, Earthings have discovered “voidoids,” invisible space structures of unknown nature; entering one voidoid means instant transportation to another, light-years away. As a result, humanity, which is spread between an ecologically ravaged Earth and a colonized Mars, has attained the capability of miraculous interstellar travel. But nobody knows how or why voidoids function, and nobody has found a planet capable of supporting life—until humans discover Silvanus, a pristine, paradiselike world. Aiden Macallan is a planetary geologist for Earth’s ruthless and powerful Terra Corp, even though the same capitalist entity likely murdered his mother, a workers’ rights advocate, and had him temporarily imprisoned. He evaluates worlds in the voidoid system for mineral exploitation and other profitable benefits. He and his team on the survey ship Argo speed towards Silvanus to stake a legal claim; the potential for colonies has set the global government of the United Earth Domain against the rival Allied Republics of Mars, which may result in war. Aiden and his trusty artificial-intelligence companion, Hutton, find Silvanus to be an astounding place—and one that’s under the threat of extinction. Veteran SF readers may hear echoes of Stanislaw Lem’s classic Solaris(1961), filtered through familiar climate change angst as Jeffrey details the ruin of Amazon rainforests and the predatory greed of corporations that still deny the existence of global warming. Some of the themes of Duneauthor Frank Herbert are also discernable; much of the plot turns on the Gaia hypothesis of planetary biology as a single, vast, living entity, which is the basis of a somewhat cloistered religion. The moralizing seldom slows the story’s brisk, urgent pacing, although the its atypical structure allows it to reach an action-packed climax on the edge of the third act; nearly everything afterward feels like epilogue. The author, who’s also a jazz musician, lovingly insinuates John Coltrane as a surprise key to first-contact communication.
Polished environmentalist SF whose occasionally New Age-y trappings don’t detract from the thrills and wonder.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2020
ISBN: 9780998674247
Page Count: 442
Publisher: JeffreyJazz Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.
In a distant future, after the Last War when the human population became endangered, a new society formed from the ashes, strictly to optimize procreation.
But not procreation between just anyone. This society, ruled by the Illum—a mysterious authoritarian group—assigns mates to select for the best traits and to breed out defects, to grow the Elite population living in the clouds. Protagonist Emeline is a stubborn and bored young woman, working her days away on the ground as a Minor Defect—one of the class of women waiting to be approved for mating with an Elite, and hoping to never be banished further from society. Emeline’s instincts are apparently to reject the rigid decorum of her society, but she spends years trying to follow the rules set out for her, or at least dissociates enough not to challenge her way of life, until one day an elusive and charming man, Hal, walks into her office to talk about art. The same day, she is approved for mating and matched with Collin, the youngest member of the Illum, in the sort of pairing that hasn’t happened in decades. Courtship with Collin is full of luxury—fancy dinners and balls in the clouds—but also lies and days of discovering secrets kept from her, while trying to keep the Elite’s rumors and malicious Press at bay. Caught between these two men, with their own agendas, and so many unanswered questions, Emeline must decide what she wants, if she can want anything at all. With a rebellion rising in secret and the repression of the Illum close at hand, she’ll find what she’s willing to lose for the ability to choose for herself. The dystopian worldbuilding is underdeveloped at best, so get swept up in discovering truth from lies quickly before it starts to fall apart in your hands.
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798217090990
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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