A promising compilation from a new talent.
A fantastic collection of sci-fi/fantasy flash fiction.
Liang’s debut offers a fascinating, often chilling look into an alternate universe. In “Run,” Gov. John Mayyor oversees a prison known as Section 7A in Illuva Forest. Known as the last stop for criminals, Section 7A is where murderers are separated from civil society and left to their own devices. The convicts must fend for themselves, using force if needed but knowing that everyone else can do the same. “Lazarus,” on the other hand, is less a story and more a disturbing description of a seductive, august city that is in fact “a test tube, an open laboratory for the military to work the kinks out of a new system of government—a system no one saw coming.” Lazarus captures a dystopian world of Benefactors, rulers who strive to create a utopia by expunging the imperfect from the universe. In “The Forest,” a more narrative-heavy tale, a group of artificially designed wolves forage for food and try to protect themselves while a man at a computer tries to control them. The lines between computer, animal, and human get blurred in this haunting example of how machines can rule and destroy our lives. “A Bad Wish”—which begins: “I say there are three kinds of people in this world. There’s the givers, the takers, and the ‘meh’ers”—traces the life of John Doe and his encounter with Xanthix, a genie who claims he can grant Joe three wishes. But when Xanthix gets to choose the wishes, the story takes an ugly turn. Brimming with imagination, the stories present unique, frequently insightful looks at the future of human experience. Not only are these mostly brief sci-fi/fantasy pieces smartly written and entertaining, they usually present a moral message, too. Young readers in particular will appreciate these fresh, easy-to-read stories while reveling in the challenges offered in their weighty content.
A promising compilation from a new talent.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-51-531572-8
Page Count: 132
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A delightfully captivating swatch of autobiography from the author of Kiss. Kiss, Switch Bitch and many others. Schoolboy Dahl wanted adventure. Classes bored him, there was work to be had in Africa, and war clouds loomed on the world's horizons. He finds himself with a trainee's job with Shell Oil of East Africa and winds up in what is now Tanzania. Then war comes in 1939 and Dahl's adventures truly begin. At the war's outbreak, Dahl volunteers for the RAF, signing on to be a fighter pilot. Wounded in the Libyan desert, he spends six months recuperating in a military hospital, then rejoins his unit in Greece, only to be driven back by the advancing Germans. On April 20, 1941, he goes head on against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens. On-target bio installment with, one hopes, lots more of this engrossing life to come.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0142413836
Page Count: 209
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
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