Four novellas, two previously unpublished, from the author of the acclaimed Was (1992) and The Child Garden (1990). ``The Unconquered Country'' (1986), Ryman's allegorical dark fantasy about Cambodia and Vietnam, has previously appeared as a book in its own right. ``O Happy Day!'' (1985), a tale of sociobiology and feminist backlash, features a transit camp run by homosexual men to which trainloads of males are dispatched for extermination by the feminists now controlling the country. In the longest tale, ``A Fall of Angels,'' disembodied minds, the ``Angels,'' strive to rejuvenate a dying red sun by feeding it hydrogen and thus save a nearby planet's colonists from extinction; in the process the Angels are ordered to exterminate a unique and intelligent creature that lives inside the sun itself. ``Fan,'' the other unpublished story, examines the media, pop icons, and their growing influence on our lives, as a fan of an Irish singer discovers ultimately that he exists only as a computer simulation. Readers with a penchant for signs, symbols, cultural icons, or political extrapolation will find much to admire here. Others will note the artificially heightened prose, the clever mechanics, the polished inventiveness, the ulterior meanings, and they will remain emotionally unmoved.
Pub Date: April 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-09929-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
Roth makes a bold entrance to adult fantasy.
What happens to heroes after they save the world?
Sloane Andrews, Matthew Weekes, Esther Park, Albert Summers, and Ines Mejia fulfilled a prophecy by defeating an evil villain and saving the human race. But that was a decade ago. Now, they’re no longer teenagers, and enough time has passed that stand-up comedians are joking about why the murderous sorcerer who destroyed entire towns with magical “Drains” akin to natural disasters was called the “Dark One.” The magic he wielded with such deadly force is now the subject of dry academic writing. These days the five “chosen ones” are huge celebrities, but they still have to deal with realistic mundanities like making a living and caring for sick parents. Sloane in particular is struggling with PTSD and, after a few Freedom of Information Act requests, is reading about a more complicated side of the government official who helped train them as kids to fight the Dark One. Not long after a big celebration marking the 10-year anniversary of the Dark One’s death, Albert dies of an overdose. When Sloane, Matthew, and Esther gather together for his funeral, something unimaginable happens. As it turns out, the Dark One may not be gone after all, and everything they thought they knew about magic, the Dark One, and the prophecy that predicted his demise is wrong. Roth (The End and Other Beginnings: Stories From the Future, 2019, etc.) made her name by writing bestselling YA action/adventure novels like the Divergent series, so it makes sense that she can so expertly deconstruct those tropes for adult audiences. There’s a lot of magic and action to make for a propulsive plot, but much more impressive are the character studies as Roth takes recognizable and beloved teen-hero types and explores what might happen to them as adults.
Roth makes a bold entrance to adult fantasy.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-16408-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Painful and powerful.
Jemisin concludes her Broken Earth trilogy (The Obelisk Gate, 2016, etc.), about a vengeful Earth whose tectonic instability can be controlled by the despised and feared orogenes.
Slowly turning to stone as a result of her contact with the Obelisk Gate, Essun nevertheless must repeat that contact to magically grab the long-lost Moon, assuaging the anger of the Earth and ending the devastating Seasons that rock the planet. Meanwhile, her estranged daughter, Nassun, has her own plan to take the Gate for herself and use it to destroy the humans who have responded viciously to the earth shaking and earth-quelling powers of her orogene brethren. Threaded throughout is the story of the stone eater Hoa, who explains his origins from several millennia earlier and how his own struggle to gain his freedom led to the Earth losing the Moon in the first place. Jemisin continues to break the heart with her sensitive, cleareyed depictions of a beyond-dysfunctional family and the extraordinarily destructive force that is prejudice. She wrestles with moral issues at an extreme level: obviously, the cruel discipline and mutilation that orogenes are subjected to violate all standards of decency, and not only is it evil, it’s simply the height of idiocy to exterminate the only people capable of calming a constantly tumultuous landscape. But how does one compassionately instill the appropriate discipline in a child who can also casually and inadvertently destroy a village? Can love survive such training? Jemisin deliberately refuses to provide easy answers: they’re simply not available, in this world or ours.
Painful and powerful.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-22924-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
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