An enjoyable, raunchy, and gory sci-fi caper replete with duplicitous characters.
A rogue crew of galactic outcasts, criminals, assassins, and informers tries to buy its way into a better existence by transporting a spaceship filled with deadly genetic contraband to shadowy clients.
In his sci-fi novel, Mosquera (Status Quo, 2014, etc.) creates a memorable and confusing—in equal measures—gallery of characters and alien races, though well-proportioned and libidinous humanoids predominate in lead roles. The setting is a far-future cosmos recovering from a traumatic interstellar war. A ship carrying deadly bioengineered life forms and GMO weapons crashes on a bleak mining-colony world. The planet’s tentacled boss, the Baron, secretly sells the top-secret cargo to mysterious, distant buyers. Tasked with delivering the goods is a collection of desperadoes and exiles eager to get off-world. There’s the putative captain, Damien Blackthorne, a tainted battleground hero with an artificial heart and “cybernetic left arm”; Frankie Nox, aka Scrap Doll, the treasure-hunting mind of a ruthless space pirate downloaded into the superbody of a sex robot; gourmet chef Braal Draedax, who schemes his way onboard with a hidden agenda; Silas Deacon, an ascetic Xartian with formidable tech skills as well as psi-based fight moves (imagine a lean, mean Spock, great in bed); and so on, nearly everyone coming accessorized with treacherously divided loyalties and secret identities. This raucous space romp is akin to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in terms of adventure, romance (well, sex), and really wild things, but with a solid R rating for violence, profanity, and erotica. The formidable mission by two-faced players (when their species even have faces) evolves into an episodic set of encounters, with a deadly game show, a slimy stowaway, and an assignment to masquerade as a “brawl ball” sports team, among other perils. It’s an agreeable thrill ride for fans who wish to deep dive into fast-moving, outlandish sci-fi pulp that doesn’t take itself too seriously but doesn’t hold back on the bloodletting and hard stuff either.
An enjoyable, raunchy, and gory sci-fi caper replete with duplicitous characters.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9916601-3-1
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Oddity Media
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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