by David Gilbert ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 2022
An involving start to an uneven but intriguing new SF series.
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A futuristic, alternate-history SF novel about a space-conquering Sino-Roman Empire.
In 2820, in the far away space colony of Breakspear Alpha, farm-raised, robotics enthusiast Sorrento accidentally raises a powerful, secret weapon from a 500-year slumber. The novel toggles to 2300s, and the Sino-Roman Empire faces its most dangerous enemy yet when the first aliens they encounter in their space voyages deploy weapons of mass destruction, bringing the powerful Empire to its knees. But a couple of scientists working on the experimental project Gemini have a possible means for salvation: the twins Shade and Themis, genetically modified humans capable of blending their minds with Artificial Intelligence and integrating into ships. Should they succeed in their mission, the Empire will survive, despite the high loss of human lives in the Galaxy War, but the leader of the Empire demands that once the war is over, Shade and Themis must be terminated to avoid a future where the human species is changed forever. As the timelines converge, a new threat to the last surviving colonies of the Empire emerges and Sorrento, alongside recently awakened Shade and his companion AI, Selene, must engage with the Empire’s past to discover long-held secrets. Gilbert’s smart SF adventure is the first in a series that imagines an alternate future stemming from a Roman Empire that never collapsed, thanks to a timely alliance with another superpower, China. The result is an appealing choice—a space-traveling Empire that merges ancient Roman and Chinese beliefs (“As the Sino-Roman Empires had merged, so had the Tables and the Lotus”) and relies on quantum physics and AI. The worldbuilding is immersive, and Shade, Selene, and Sorrento gain more agency as the story progresses. Large sections of exposition hold back the action, however, and typos often distract. Still, the story’s developing take on power, quantum physics, and human identity is well done.
An involving start to an uneven but intriguing new SF series.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2022
ISBN: 9781638124627
Page Count: 446
Publisher: Pen Culture Solutions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Cixin Liu ; translated by Ken Liu ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2014
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.
Strange and fascinating alien-contact yarn, the first of a trilogy from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, young physicist Ye Wenjie helplessly watches as fanatical Red Guards beat her father to death. She ends up in a remote re-education (i.e. forced labor) camp not far from an imposing, top secret military installation called Red Coast Base. Eventually, Ye comes to work at Red Coast as a lowly technician, but what really goes on there? Weapons research, certainly, but is it also listening for signals from space—maybe even signaling in return? Another thread picks up the story 40 years later, when nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao and thuggish but perceptive policeman Shi Qiang, summoned by a top-secret international (!) military commission, learn of a war so secret and mysterious that the military officers will give no details. Of more immediate concern is a series of inexplicable deaths, all prominent scientists, including the suicide of Yang Dong, the physicist daughter of Ye Wenjie; the scientists were involved with the shadowy group Frontiers of Science. Wang agrees to join the group and investigate and soon must confront events that seem to defy the laws of physics. He also logs on to a highly sophisticated virtual reality game called “Three Body,” set on a planet whose unpredictable and often deadly environment alternates between Stable times and Chaotic times. And he meets Ye Wenjie, rehabilitated and now a retired professor. Ye begins to tell Wang what happened more than 40 years ago. Jaw-dropping revelations build to a stunning conclusion. In concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu.
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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by Cixin Liu ; translated by Joel Martinsen
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by Cixin Liu ; translated by Joel Martinsen
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