Slow to start, and increasingly amorphous toward the end, but memorably imaginative, with intriguing characters and flashes...
Gilman debuts with a sprawling Victorian-style fantasy.
Young Arjun, talented musician and linguist, grows up in a society that worships a music-god known as the Voice. But when the Voice unaccountably withdraws, Arjun decides to go in search of it. He travels to the vast city Ararat, home to uncountable gods. Just as he arrives, the Bird-God soars above the city, granting Jack Sheppard, a slave in a silk mill, the power of flight. Jack escapes, and uses his newfound abilities to free other slaves and empty the city’s prisons. Meanwhile, Professor Holbach traps some Bird-God power inside a vast warship, Thunderer. Countess Ilona immediately orders the flying ship to attack and subdue the city’s other gangster-oligarch rulers. After rejecting an approach by the Spider, a disinterested entity that runs a sort of human lottery, Arjun meets Olympia, Holbach’s lawyer, and starts work translating rare ancient books to garner information for Holbach’s mysterious Atlas. Jack’s freed slaves fight with the white robes, child-warriors devoted to a fire-god who are being manipulated by other oligarchs to revolt against Ilona in ways beyond the reach of Thunderer. As Ilona’s power crumbles, Holbach sends Arjun to confront Shay, a mysterious, possibly immortal entity who captures and confines scraps of gods. Shay so damages one of them, a water-monster called Typhon, that it hunts Arjun while spreading disease and death through the slums. As the city spirals into civil war and worse, can anyone find a way to defeat Typhon and stop the slaughter?
Slow to start, and increasingly amorphous toward the end, but memorably imaginative, with intriguing characters and flashes of genuine originality: impressive and highly promising.Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-553-80676-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
Good characters, keen social commentary, and propulsive action sequences with a bit too much tech jargon.
An extreme gamer who has concocted a scheme to monetize his expertise gets into trouble navigating a virtual world that starts to intrude on his real life.
Following in the footsteps of Ernie Cline, who hit the geek gold mine with Ready Player One (2011), Ruff (Lovecraft Country, 2016, etc.) takes his shot at a near-future gaming world that’s more grounded than most virtual-reality universes but also more complex. Our main protagonist is John Chu, the founder of Sherpa, Inc., a consulting firm that guides new gamers through a variety of mostly VR–based video games. He has good partners in Jolene, a more mature African American gamer who won’t take any of his shit, and Anja, a brilliant young player whose permanent injury has left her on life support, albeit with thought-controlled access to the VR world. Unfortunately, he also has a nemesis in Darla Jean Covington, his virtual ex-girlfriend, who is clearly holding a grudge. The kicker comes when Chu is approached by a man named Smith on behalf of a pseudonymous client named Mr. Jones, who wishes to pay him an astonishing $100,000 per week for his exclusive services. Lurking in the background is Ms. Pang, an enigmatic Chinese woman who might be a spy. Soon Chu begins to suspect that his mysterious client is actually North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Fortunately, Chu has some backup from his mother, who’s a member of a secretive anti-terrorist task force called Zero Day, and an absent father who pulls his weight when he needs to. It’s a pretty good thriller, but it’s also very much a book for gamers by gamers. If acronyms like MMORPG, PvP, or PPML throw you for a loop, this might not be the ride for you. Gamers for life who can pry themselves off the controller will certainly dig this digital-era whodunit.
Good characters, keen social commentary, and propulsive action sequences with a bit too much tech jargon.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-285467-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
An engaging story framed by a brooding meditation on time and meaning.
In this new novel by Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive, 2016), a man of extraordinarily long life deals with a painfully ordinary question: what is it we live for?
Tom Hazard, though he has gone by many names, has an unusual condition that makes him age exceptionally slowly—he's more than 400 years old in 2017 but looks a mere 40-something. Tragic events taught him early that his seeming agelessness is a lightning rod for witch hunters and the dangerously suspicious in all eras. For protection, he belongs to the Albatross Society, a secret organization led by Hendrich, an ancient, charismatic man who's highly protective of his members and aggressive about locating and admitting other “albas” into the group. After assisting Hendrich in one such quest, Tom starts a new life in London; he's haunted by memories of his previous life there in the early 1600s, when he had to leave his wife and young child to ensure their safety. He's losing hope that Hendrich will help him find his daughter, who he's learned shares his condition. He muddles through his days until he meets a French teacher who claims she recognizes his face. Unraveling that mystery will lead Tom to re-examine his deeply etched pessimism. Meanwhile, readers are treated to memories of his past, including encounters with Shakespeare, Capt. Cook, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Tom sometimes wallows overmuch about the changelessness of the human condition, and one might be forgiven for wondering why so much time has not done more to heal his oldest wounds. But Haig skillfully enlivens Tom’s history with spare, well-chosen detail, making much of the book transporting.
An engaging story framed by a brooding meditation on time and meaning.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52287-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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