Bracing, guilt-haunted SF-noir set against the timely backdrop of a politically divided America.
In Eadington’s speculative novel, a former National Guardsman traumatized by politically motivated violence and civil conflict learns his memories may be deceptive implants.
The story begins in 2048, in the aftermath of several years (a period called “the Lapse”) of right-wing violence and reactionary terrorism perpetrated by fundamentalist Christian militias and anti-immigrant “patriots” that tore the United States apart. Pete Bascom is a former National Guardsman in California who is traumatized by physical and psychological wounds and works in a government department devoted to victim Redress and Reparations as society recovers. Suddenly, however, the program is discontinued, leaving Pete without a cause until he overhears another ex-Guardsman’s boasts about his past; the man’s history is identical to Bascom’s. Pete is forced to consider the possibility that his memories are not his own, but rather some kind of advanced neural transplant that has successfully repressed his origins. He learns that he may actually be Jacob Leiter, an unsavory character of the bygone era who was hip-deep in the realms of pornography, sex work, and political extremism. Every thread the hero follows on his private inquest deeper into California’s ugly underground leads to more stonewalling and evasion (even by those closest to him, like a part-time lover), and there are threats from especially menacing characters warning him to leave things from the bad old days alone. The Philip K. Dick-like premise of scrambled identity in a futurescape of disquiet and deceit is effectively rendered in an arid, noirish fashion that may remind readers of the classic film Chinatown (the use of the name “Jake” and the ways in which the West Coast water supply figures into the plot further cement the comparison). As in Dick’s work, absolute truth and full closure elude the protagonist; via scraps and oblique references, readers get a fragmentary picture of the fateful 21st-century awfulness between red and blue states (“I can call the mid-30s what they were. People were shooting each other, bombing each other. Chrissakes, thousands of people died in the Battle of Akron. That’s a war”).
Bracing, guilt-haunted SF-noir set against the timely backdrop of a politically divided America.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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