A riveting opening series installment that introduces spirited characters and an unforgettable dystopian world.
In Kennedy’s sci-fi novel and series launch, an ex-con returns to his home planet, where political unrest threatens his family.
After serving five years for a crime he didn’t commit, Arliss Dubai returns to the planet Teton. He hopes to ease his way back into family life with his wife, Meera, and their 12-year-old son, Kip. Arliss is a “Blend” with bioengineered enhancements that grant him qualities like superhuman vision and strength. Humans originally engineered Blends to help perfect their megacities in Teton’s unforgiving climate. In the years since, those like Arliss, instantly recognizable by their blue skin, have been treated like lesser people. That’s also the case for blue-freckled “Patchworks” (or “Patchies”), the hybrid children (like Kip) of Blend/non-Blend parents. The discrimination has only gotten worse during Arliss’ incarceration, with more security checkpoints and nodes for Blends than ever before. The “Pure Breathers,” a group that began as “fringe extremists,” has garnered power via members in government; the faction’s goal seems to be segregation followed by forced migration of the Blends. Some of the blue-skinned locals want Arliss to serve as the muscle in their resistance, but he’s determined to stay out of trouble; he’s already got his hands full as he struggles to reconnect with Kip. The tween has been running around with the “Pikers,” an anti-government group of youngsters that may occasionally dabble in criminal acts. Arliss is up for the challenge of protecting his family while struggling to maintain peace with a corrupt government and people who hate his kind.
Kennedy has crafted a fascinating world and equally absorbing characters. Meera, for example, is the daughter of Galen Keet, a “Wind Reader” (one of a religious group that acts as “vessels for the planet’s voice”), who practically disowned her years ago upon learning that her baby-to-be was a Patchie. Everyone in the cast is boldly defined, and there’s no obvious villain—just individuals who might do dubious things or follow a misguided path. They all live in the megalopolis of Vandress among its ten towering Megas, including the “architecturally convoluted” Sinquin (where the Dubais’ apartment is located). The bulk of the story is conveyed through dialogue as the narrative perspective shifts among those of Arliss and members of his family, the Pikers’ leader, and a member of the governing Unified Council. The topics of conversation include politics, Arliss and Meera’s concerns about their son’s potential issues, and the Pikers’ plans. There’s little in the way of action, though one scene in particular is both exhilarating and dramatically arresting. As the story progresses, mysteries pop up, from details about Arliss’ imprisonment to the strange duo who helps Arliss when “Enforcement Q” officers gang up on him. The story truly picks up steam in the latter half, which offers such juicy bits as a startling betrayal, a life-changing decision, and striking deaths. Numerous questions that arise remain unanswered at the end, including a terrific subplot that’s left glaringly open, which gives readers plenty of incentive to hang on for the sequels.
A riveting opening series installment that introduces spirited characters and an unforgettable dystopian world.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2025
ISBN: 9798270669768
Page Count: 478
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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