THUNDERER

Name: THUNDERER
Author: Felix Gilman
ISBN: 978-0-553-80676-2

by Felix Gilman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 26, 2007

Slow to start, and increasingly amorphous toward the end, but memorably imaginative, with intriguing characters and flashes...

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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

Categories:

FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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THE ANDROMEDA EVOLUTION

by Michael Crichton & Daniel H. Wilson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.

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Over 50 years after an extraterrestrial microbe wiped out a small Arizona town, something very strange has appeared in the Amazon jungle in Wilson’s follow-up to Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.

The microparticle's introduction to Earth in 1967 was the disastrous result of an American weapons research program. Before it could be contained, Andromeda killed all but two people in tiny Piedmont, Arizona; during testing after the disaster, AS-1 evolved and escaped into the atmosphere. Project Eternal Vigilance was quickly set up to scan for any possible new outbreaks of Andromeda. Now, an anomaly with “signature peaks” closely resembling the original Andromeda Strain has been spotted in the heart of the Amazon, and a Wildfire Alert is issued. A diverse team is assembled: Nidhi Vedala, an MIT nanotechnology expert born in a Mumbai slum; Harold Odhiambo, a Kenyan xenogeologist; Peng Wu, a Chinese doctor and taikonaut; Sophie Kline, a paraplegic astronaut and nanorobotics expert based on the International Space Station; and, a last-minute addition, roboticist James Stone, son of Dr. Jeremy Stone from The Andromeda Strain. They must journey into the deepest part of the jungle to study and hopefully contain the dire threat that the anomaly seemingly poses to humanity. But the jungle has its own dangers, and it’s not long before distrust and suspicion grip the team. They’ll need to come together to take on what waits for them inside a mysterious structure that may not be of this world. Setting the story over the course of five days, Wilson (Robopocalypse, 2011, etc.) combines the best elements of hard SF novels and techno-thrillers, using recovered video, audio, and interview transcripts to shape the narrative, with his own robotics expertise adding flavor and heft. Despite a bit of acronym overload, this is an atmospheric and often terrifying roller-coaster ride with (literally) sky-high stakes that pays plenty of homage to The Andromeda Strain while also echoing the spirit and mood of Crichton’s other works, such as Jurassic Park and Congo. Add more than a few twists and exciting set pieces (especially in the finale) to the mix, and you’ve got a winner.

A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.