A promising launch to a visionary space-empire series with multicultural insight.
Sci-fi author Winnie’s debut describes the origin of the vast, galaxy-spanning Terran Empire and the 31st-century ascent of a Mongolian prince who defends Earth and lays the groundwork for an immortal dynasty.
America didn’t last much past the 23rd century. In the 31st, Mongolia is a dominant world power, and spacefaring humans have defeated one alien invasion, earning respect and fear among the alien Galactic Council. Angkor is a reluctant heir to the neo-Mongol throne, preferring his scientific research and idyllic, monogamous marriage to a commoner. But the machinations of politics demand that he not only succeed his father as the planet’s benevolent despot, but also revive the ancient god-king title of “Khan”—a sign that humanity plans to expand its territory outward to the stars. Angkor contends not only with deadly alien enemies planning to contain him, but also treachery on Earth. A framing story informs readers that the Terran Empire will eventually spread throughout the universe, its original rulers becoming legendary, godlike figures, and this installment explains how that all came to be, with Buddhist underpinnings to Angkor’s audacious scheme to genetically forge a far-reaching line of imperial descendants. This is an impressive inception volume in a prospective saga, considering its ambitions, and it makes a good move right out of the gate by drawing from the rich well of Asian culture and values. Occasionally the narrative takes a dizzying, great leap forward over cosmic victories and wars that slaughter millions, and some foes become friends (and vice versa) in the rapid span of a few pages. But while similar contributions to the fantasy/sci-fi realm spend too many pages setting up rules and characters who may only come to the fore much later on, Winnie offers plenty of action and a firm enough finale that readers may enjoy this book as a stand-alone work. In Angkor, the story has a nuanced hero who, like the storied Genghis Khan, can seem enlightened and brilliant yet also perpetuate barbaric deeds that associate him with ruthless conquest.
A promising launch to a visionary space-empire series with multicultural insight.Pub Date: May 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5466-4193-3
Page Count: 364
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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