A genuinely funny sendup of contemporary American politics.
In Rogers’ political satire, after the two major political parties collapse, there is a mad dash to commandeer the White House and uncover a scandal that will oust the current president.
In a display of apathy-as-protest, American voters simply ignore a Congressional election, neglecting to vote in any meaningful number of representatives and forcing the rebranding of the two dominant political parties. In an event that comes to be known as “The Great Realignment,” Democrats and Republicans are rechristened Stalactites and Stalagmites, or “Tites” and “Mites” for short. Like so many other politicians, Senator Sheffield Belmond, a Stalactite from Minnesota, has his ambitious sights set on the Oval Office, but his “sincerity, sterling progressive credentials, legislative obscurity, and darn Midwestern likeability” just aren’t quite enough; President John Stafford, who belongs to neither party, is widely popular. Belmond hopes to find a scandal to unseat Stafford, as does Speaker of the House Jan Staffort, a trans woman who resents the president for having such a similar last name—a strangely plausible motivation in this politically astute novel by Rogers. Digging up dirt on the president turns out to be a daunting task since it appears that Stafford is “possibly the least corrupt president we’ve had in at least twenty years.” An opportunity arises, though, when United States Army Lt. Park-Raak, a man who loathes Stafford, finds “impeachment grade information” indicating that the president is involved in financial impropriety. Park-Raak shares the evidence with his girlfriend Elle Crafton, a reporter for the Washington Herald. At the heart of the potential scandal is “Pisanionium,” a recently discovered element that somehow has artificial intelligence properties built into it and is used to power Phycenook, the dominant social media website.
The author inventively creates an absurd political cosmos that is deliciously reminiscent of the real one, a considerable feat given Washington’s inclination to self-parody. The story can lag a bit—the plot is freighted with excessive attention to superfluously granular details. Still, Rogers concocts an alternative political universe realistic enough to be evocative of the contemporary scene while remaining profoundly and entertainingly ridiculous; one bill Staffort sponsors delinks federal legislation from the law of cause and effect, catalyzing comically ludicrous scientific and philosophical debates about its defensibility. And Belmond is a prolific poet—he’s written thousands of poems—including this slice of artless callowness: “An old fellow out of Nantucket / had a list: before he kicked the bucket, / He thought it’d be nifty / To visit all fifty / States, but developed melanoma, so had to adjust it.” Mercifully, the author avoids any heavy-handed political grandstanding or sermonizing—this is a work of humor, first and foremost, not a didactic polemic. The author is not interested in scoring cheap partisan points—his target is the whole of political culture. As a result, the novel should appeal to any reader in search of a well-executed political farce that offends widely and equally. This is an intelligently conceived work, and most enjoyable.
A genuinely funny sendup of contemporary American politics.Pub Date: June 28, 2024
ISBN: 9798218553951
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Intra Murus Prss
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A standout genre-bending adventure with a tender romantic streak.
Two women on opposite sides of a long and bitter conflict each hear a prophecy that she holds the key to victory…but not which one of them will actually triumph.
On a far-in-the-future Earth, most of the human race is dominated by the Talusar empire. The Talusar worship the Fever, a strange illness that kills all who contract it. Half of those people stay dead, but the other half return to live with some kind of psychic gift, most commonly the ability to see the past. A smaller civilization, the Cedre, believe the mortality rate is not worth the loss of life, and fight to keep themselves quarantined. The Talusar have pushed the Cedre to a few small areas of the planet and to a space station in Earth’s orbit. Elegy Ahn is the second daughter of the Sword of Cedre, the Cedre’s most powerful political figure; she’s used to being the “spare” to her elder sister’s "heir." When the “augurs,” revered (and politically neutral) Talusar people with the rare Fever gift of seeing into the future, summon both Elegy and Rava Vidar, a ruthless Talusar general, they tell the women that each has the potential to lead their nation to victory over the other. As to which will triumph? Separately, the augurs give both Elegy and Rava cryptic clues. Elegy is told of three mysterious figures she’ll need to find, including a man with whom she will fall in love. Elegy is skeptical, especially since she’s already happily married. But when Rava Vidar takes swift and violent action against Elegy and Cedre, Elegy is forced to embrace her pivotal role in her people’s survival. Roth’s worldbuilding is detailed without being overwhelming; she focuses more on dystopia in this book and promises to dive deeper into speculative SF adventure in the next installment of the duology. The romance element is seamlessly woven into the plot and comes off elegantly as a result of Roth’s excellent character development.
A standout genre-bending adventure with a tender romantic streak.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9781250347909
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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