First of a much-hyped fantasy series. In Serendair, ex-whore Rhapsody flees an insistent and thoroughly unpleasant former client, only to encounter an enigmatic assassin enslaved by a F—dor, a primordial fire-demon. By swearing kinship with the assassin and renaming him Achmed the Snake, Rhapsody unwittingly frees him. Deeply suspicious of Rhapsody’s Namer magic, the new Achmed abducts and interrogates her. The infuriated F—dor, meanwhile, sends forth the Shing, a thousand-strong army of shadow-beings dedicated to hunting Achmed down. Rhapsody, Achmed, and Grunthor, Achmed’s gigantic warrior-sidekick, head for the Enchanted Forest’s Great Tree, Sagia, whose roots extend through space and time. As they clamber inside Sagia’s vast roots, Achmed explains that he and Grunthor are Bolg, hereditary enemies of the F—dor, whom they kill because the F—dor intend to wake the Primal Wyrm from its slumber deep inside the world, destroying everything in fire. Later, when they come upon the Wyrm, Rhapsody sings it into prolonged sleep. But to escape Sagia, they must pass through the fire at the world’s core, where each is remade: Rhapsody becomes stunningly beautiful (though unconscious of her beauty) and acquires a flaming sword; Grunthor gains the powers of the earth, while Achmed can clairvoyantly sense the path ahead. They emerge on the other side of the world, to learn that 1400 years have passed. Serendair has been destroyed, though immortal survivors have populated this new land. Achmed decides it’s time the Bolg had a king. But a malevolent spirit followed the colonists. Did the F—dor survive too? A well-worked-out backdrop of impressive depth and appeal, and there’s a reasonable if anticlimactic resolution. Despite the hype, though, newcomer Haydon’s still feeling her way. (First printing of 100,000)
Pub Date: Sept. 13, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-86752-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
With its bug-eyed monsters, one might think Dune was written thirty years ago; it has a fantastically complex schemata and...
This future space fantasy might start an underground craze.
It feeds on the shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Martian series), Aeschylus, Christ and J.R. Tolkien. The novel has a closed system of internal cross-references, and features a glossary, maps and appendices dealing with future religions and ecology. Dune itself is a desert planet where a certain spice liquor is mined in the sands; the spice is a supremely addictive narcotic and control of its distribution means control of the universe. This at a future time when the human race has reached a point of intellectual stagnation. What is needed is a Messiah. That's our hero, called variously Paul, then Muad'Dib (the One Who Points the Way), then Kwisatz Haderach (the space-time Messiah). Paul, who is a member of the House of Atreides (!), suddenly blooms in his middle teens with an ability to read the future and the reader too will be fascinated with the outcome of this projection.
With its bug-eyed monsters, one might think Dune was written thirty years ago; it has a fantastically complex schemata and it should interest advanced sci-fi devotees.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1965
ISBN: 0441013597
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Chilton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1965
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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