A satisfying sequel with likable characters, playful humor, and a prescient sense of the foolishness of modern life.
A circuitous sequel explaining all the weird things that happened in Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (2018).
To recap: Spunky April May and her best pal, Andy Skampt, discovered an alien robot she named Carl, the first of many to appear around the globe. They roped in April’s ex Maya, a scientist named Miranda, and a few other like-minded folks to investigate the phenomenon while a professional troll named Peter Petrawicki caused trouble for now-famous April, leading to her apparent death by explosion. Unlike its predecessor, this sequel is narrated by a variety of April’s crew members until our hero is miraculously and inevitably resurrected, albeit with some very strange upgrades. It’s still pretty entertaining, but Green practically bends over backward to reverse-engineer his oddball scenario so it finally makes sense. The Carls created a planet-spanning reverie, one which Peter is trying to re-create from a secret lab on a remote island, soon infiltrated by Miranda. Andy is delivered a MacGuffin in a magic volume called The Book of Good Times that can not only instruct him and his comrades on how to proceed, but also reads his thoughts and responds. His job is to infiltrate “The Thread,” a mysterious cabal seeking to manipulate a world forever changed by the Carls. To shorten a Blues Brothers–esque quote without spoiling things, Team April has millions of dollars, a huge online audience, virtually unlimited resources and access to the things they need, a lead with brand new superpowers and...a monkey? A really powerful sentient monkey who turns out to be not an alien but of a Byzantine earthly origin and who also happens to be at war with a doppelgänger that might just be the end of us all. Green’s debut was a better novel with a wildly intriguing setup, so it’s not surprising that getting things wrapped up is a bit of a twisty affair.
A satisfying sequel with likable characters, playful humor, and a prescient sense of the foolishness of modern life.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4347-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.
A fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife—and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water—they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons. Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. Crimson and midnight spores are worse. Ships protected by spore-killing silver sail these seas, and it’s Tress’ quest to find a ship and somehow persuade its crew to carry her to a place no ships want to go, to rescue a person nobody cares about but her. Luckily, Tress is kindhearted, resourceful, and curious—which also makes her an appealing heroine. Along her journey, Tress encounters a talking rat, a crew of reluctant pirates, and plenty of danger. Her story is narrated by an unusual cabin boy with a sharp wit. (About one duke, he says, “He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.”) The overall effect is not unlike The Princess Bride, which Sanderson cites as an inspiration.
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781250899651
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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