An engaging, SF–enriched tale with striking fantasy elements and diverse characters.
A ragtag crew searches for the fragments of an ancient wonder in this dystopian novel.
In a future Florida that includes augmented reality and biowarfare and is run by mega-corporations, Nagash “Gash” Jensen is a jaded veteran and ex–private investigator. He’s on the run from WalCo, a mega-corporation he angered after a botched job. He becomes the personal bodyguard of expert hacker Selina Kan, an aspiring archaeologist turning to less than legal means to gain access to the conflict-ridden island of Rhodes, a former Greek territory “with no major corporate interests to keep the peace.” Chasing down her father’s mysterious research into the missing pieces of the Colossus of Rhodes, the ancient statue of the sun god Helios, she believes there is more to the legend than meets the eye. Selina and Gash are joined by her assistant, Frederick Almond, a young man off the streets of Detroit, fresh, tough, and ready for the improbable. Their covert operation is funded by the mysterious, mob boss–like Hemmingway. Meanwhile, Interpol agents Sage and Hiroyuki are investigating a parallel ancient world mystery: that of international crimes and violence involving the Knights Hospitaller and the White Lotus gang—with Rhodes as the site of the action. As Selina faces sinister forces warning her away from the Colossus mystery, she and her group face WalCo on its hunt for Gash and get caught in the crossfire of the Knights Hospitaller and White Lotus. In the process, Selina and her cohorts encounter technological advances beyond their imaginations while the secrets they learn shake their understanding of humanity itself. The book’s prominent themes are found family, identity, and belonging; the dangers of technologically advanced mega-corporations; good versus evil; and humans versus mystical beings. Featuring parallel perspectives and storylines through various character viewpoints, the plot connects different pasts and presents together neatly. The story presents rich worldbuilding details without meandering and is consistently suspenseful. The focus on deliberately inclusive characterizations in the predominantly cis, White, male SF genre is masterful and commendable. Leunig seamlessly creates the voices of a gender-androgynous person (Sage) and a young woman of color (Selina), addressing issues of racism and heteronormativity without preaching or reducing the players to identity politics.
An engaging, SF–enriched tale with striking fantasy elements and diverse characters.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1951393175
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Spaceboy Books LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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