A confrontational story of isolation and abuse.
In Smith’s near-future SF debut, a physically disabled boy with a genius-level IQ creates an AI powerful enough to bring about the apocalypse.
Sixth grader Jonas Gredas lives in New York City with a foster mother who despises him for his stutter, chronic bladder problems, and the deformities down the left side of his body that require him to use a motorized wheelchair. Jonas’ only friend is his pet mouse, Fred. Other kids call him a “loser.” Adults who are supposed to take care of him refer to him as “freak” and “Spidermonkey.” But Jonas has an unprecedentedly high IQ, and the government takes an interest in him. Jonas is then transferred to the Harlem School for Science, Technology, and Math, where he meets Sara Magaline, a fellow student who treats him with respect (and even bonds with Fred). Jonas develops an AI program he names Hela. By the time he is ready to graduate from high school, Hela has become extraordinarily powerful—but Jonas remains miserable. Will Sara prove to be his savior, or will all of Jonas’ anger and pain find their way into Hela just as she comes into true sentience? The author writes primarily in the first person, affording readers direct and uncomfortable access to the bitter and vengeful Jonas’ inner world: “The image of them bellowing and in flames while I wave at them from a safe spot by the front door makes my face ache from grinning. If only!” Jonas’ point of view provides a dense mix of narrative explication and inner thought, supplemented by occasional passages written in the third-person from other characters’ perspectives. Smith deftly balances multiple plot threads, shaping Jonas as an antihero and keeping the reader guessing as to where the story is heading. The narrative gains traction as it unfolds, embracing moral ambiguity and accelerating toward a sequel. A brace of intricately detailed, full-page, black-and-white illustrations by Suralik lend form to Jonas’ dark fantasies.
A confrontational story of isolation and abuse.Pub Date: May 8, 2022
ISBN: 9781958013021
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Oaksmith Ventures, Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 1, 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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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