Sci-fi enthusiasts should prepare to be lured in by this series entry that’s sturdier and more assertive than the first.
Huntington’s (The Rings of Elpída, 2013) sci-fi series continues, as the inhabitants of a dying Earth train youngsters to acclimate to another planet—and its mind-invading alien species.
The ringed planet Elpída was supposed to be Earth’s salvation, but an expedition centuries ago to colonize the new world was a failure. It turned out that Elpída was already inhabited by the Multitude, who exist as voices inside human minds; most people can’t handle the Multitude’s intrusion and quickly go insane. A group on Earth trains teenagers to withstand Elpída’s atmosphere and gravity, and genetically engineers children, such as Lucia, who are “hardwired” to safely hear the Multitude. Humans often converse with individually named voices within the Multitude, but it considers itself a unified collective. Some of its members, however, go rogue with their own agenda, and it becomes clear that the potential colonists may not be as welcome on Elpída as they’d hoped. This series installment, like the debut, has a tendency to reside more in the metaphysical than the tangible, which is practically a necessity, as the aliens have no physical form as far as humans know. However, Huntington’s latest has a far more palpable and engaging plot. The Multitude, for example, appears less frequently, and the bulk of the story takes place on Earth as Lucia, Isak, and others undergo simulations and training. Evelyn Feelds, who was part of the original expedition and is now accepted as one of the Multitude, is the titular emissary, and she’s often seen in flesh and blood as one of the trainees. There’s still plenty that’s more conceptual; for example, the Multitude use the word “love” almost as an honorific (“Evelyn-Our-love.”). The story also establishes its villains quite well; Shimon is a notable baddie who may turn deadly once the group reaches Elpída, and Uyol of the Multitude is distinguishable by his boldface dialogue. Huntington’s dexterity with prose is also undeniable: she describes an especially violent “sim” as “All gritted teeth and burning blood, like leaves falling in the autumn months or drops of acid rain.”
Sci-fi enthusiasts should prepare to be lured in by this series entry that’s sturdier and more assertive than the first.Pub Date: March 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1507789414
Page Count: 662
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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