An involving start to an uneven but intriguing new SF series.
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
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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