A plausible story of extraterrestrial contact with a disappointing lack of resolution.
College students investigate the links between possible extraterrestrial signals, psi phenomena, and twins in this SF novel.
A prequel to Johnston’s first novel, The Dar Lumbre Chronicles (2018), this outing takes place 90 years earlier, in 2045. America—NatGov—now has only one major party, and the “Republic of California” has seceded from the union. NatGov’s new president is Rex Horn, a billionaire who’s already up for impeachment for several reasons, including wild plans such as mounting a search for Planet X, supposedly the solar system’s 10th planet. Darien Segura, 22, an astronomy undergraduate at New Mexico State University Alamogordo, also believes that Planet X exists, something he hopes to research. He gets his chance through a Horn-backed government project to investigate whether radio waves emanating from a star cluster represent extraterrestrial contact. Also joining the project is Carly Hansen, new to NMSU as a graduate student in psychology, specializing in parapsychology. Their work indicates that extrasensory perception, especially between twins, could decode a message possibly buried in the radio waves. Startling findings take the team deep into Panama’s jungle, where Darien, an adoptee who has some ESP ability, was born. There, he might find a twin—and answers. First contact is an intriguing hook, made more effective through believable details of carrying out scientific research and rainforest trekking, bolstered by Johnston’s background in biology, chemistry, and jungle survival. Satiric political elements add entertainment as well. Less successful, though, is a subplot concerning a tepid romantic triangle between Darien, Carly, and her longtime boyfriend. The novel also falters in pacing and structure: Inessential details slow things down (including minutiae about an Orange Bowl college football game), and the ending doesn’t deliver on the premise, instead only hinting at a real payoff.
A plausible story of extraterrestrial contact with a disappointing lack of resolution.Pub Date: June 15, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-65-345658-9
Page Count: 257
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.
The fourth and final volume in the Terra Ignota series, a science fantasy set on a 25th-century Earth where people affiliate by philosophy and interest instead of geography.
For the first time in centuries, the world is seized by war—once the combatants actually figure out how to fight one. While rivalries among the Hives provide several motives for conflict, primary among them is whether J.E.D.D. Mason, the heir to various political powers and apparently a god from another universe in human form, should assume absolute rule over the world and transform it for the better. Gathering any large group to further the progress of the war or the possibility for peace is hampered by the loss of the world transit system of flying cars and the global communications network, both shut down by parties unknown, indicating a hidden and dangerous faction manipulating the situation for its own ends. As events play out, they bear a strong resemblance to aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey, suggesting the persistent influence of Bridger, a deceased child who was also probably a god. Is tragedy inevitable, or can the characters defy their apparent fates? This often intriguing but decidedly peculiar chimera of a story seems to have been a philosophical experiment, but it’s difficult to determine just what was being tested. The worldbuilding—part science, part magic—doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny, and the political structure defies comprehension. The global government consists of an oligarchy of people deeply and intimately connected by love and hate on a scale which surpasses the royal dynasties of old, and it includes convicted felons among their number. Perhaps the characters are intended as an outsized satiric comment on the way politicians embrace expediency over morality or personal feelings, but these supposedly morally advanced potentates commit so many perverse atrocities against one another it is difficult to engage with them as people. At times, they seem nearly as alien as J.E.D.D. Mason.
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7806-4
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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