An energetic but familiar New Age sci-fi/fantasy adventure.
In this debut novel, a young, bright, and good-looking creative worker at a video game company copes with New York City after a recent breakup.
Depressed, pressured by his bosses at Enigmatic Adventures, and alone except for his cat, Norton, Derek Evans decides to sign up for a medical study of a new antidepressant pill. But it seems that the study is fraudulent, conducted by a dubious figure named Harry Pembroke, who is murdered right after Derek ingests the drug. And as Derek tries to return to his everyday life, taking an interest in his lovely co-worker Allie “G” Giancana, the “God Virus” concealed in the experimental medicine takes hold in his DNA. As his DNA is altered, Derek finds himself changing in incredible ways—out-of-body experiences, telepathy, and more all become regular occurrences as his ordinary humanity is replaced with extraordinary new skills. Allie becomes infected with the “God Virus” through contact with Derek, and they both discover that Pembroke was killed by dangerous people in the underworld and intelligence communities who want these new abilities only for themselves. The easiest way to steal these powers is to extract them from Derek’s and Allie’s brains by force—but that won’t be easy now that they are superhuman. The conflict escalates and more and greater cosmic (and sometimes comic) revelations await on every page. Somewhat picaresque, with hints of Tom Robbins here and there, Voyager’s tale is fast-paced and has many entertaining moving parts. The characters and dialogue are fun despite being somewhat glib. While the subject matter will be recognizable to anyone exposed to “self-actualization” belief systems, this does not ultimately detract from the action in the story. But Voyager sometimes indulges in mystically tweaking the reader (“Lying against a dune, Derek and Allie lounged in the sand, wordlessly chatted, and ate”). And connections between the New Age idea of “indigo children”—“becoming indigo” in the novel—and the author’s pseudonym can be overly direct.
An energetic but familiar New Age sci-fi/fantasy adventure.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5192-4887-9
Page Count: 424
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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For those who like their science fiction dense, monumental, and a bit overwrought.
Brown is back with Book 4 of his Red Rising series (Morning Star, 2016, etc.) and explores familiar themes of rebellion, revenge, and political instability.
This novel examines the ramifications and pitfalls of trying to build a new world out of the ashes of the old. The events here take place 10 years after the conclusion of Morning Star, which ended on a seemingly positive note. Darrow, aka Reaper, and his lover, Virginia au Augustus, aka Mustang, had vanquished the Golds, the elite ruling class, so hope was held out that a new order would arise. But in the new book it becomes clear that the concept of political order is tenuous at best, for Darrow’s first thoughts are on the forces of violence and chaos he has unleashed: “famines and genocide...piracy...terrorism, radiation sickness and disease...and the one hundred million lives lost in my [nuclear] war.” Readers familiar with the previous trilogy—and you'll have to be if you want to understand the current novel—will welcome a familiar cast of characters, including Mustang, Sevro (Darrow’s friend and fellow warrior), and Lysander (grandson of the Sovereign). Readers will also find familiarity in Brown’s idiosyncratic naming system (Cassius au Bellona, Octavia au Lune) and even in his vocabulary for cursing (“Goryhell,” “Bloodydamn,” “Slag that”). Brown introduces a number of new characters, including 18-year-old Lyria, a survivor of the initial Rising who gives a fresh perspective on the violence of the new war—and violence is indeed never far away from the world Brown creates. (He includes one particularly gruesome gladiatorial combat between Cassius and a host of enemies.) Brown imparts an epic quality to the events in part by his use of names. It’s impossible to ignore the weighty connotations of characters when they sport names like Bellerephon, Diomedes, Dido, and Apollonius.
For those who like their science fiction dense, monumental, and a bit overwrought.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-425-28591-6
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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