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
The narrator is researching for his book, The Day the World Ended, when he comes up against his karass, as he later understands it through Bokononism. It leads him to investigate Dr. Hoenniker, "Father of the A-Bomb," whom his son Little Newt says was playing cat's cradle when the bomb dropped (people weren't his specialty). The good doctor left his children an even greater weapon of devastation in ice-nine, an inheritance which won his ugly daughter a handsome husband; little Newt, a Russian midget just his size for an affair that ended when she absconded with a sliver of ice-nine; and made unlikely Franklin the right hand man of Papa Monzano of San Lorenzo, a make-believe Caribbean republic. On the trail of ice-nine, the narrator comes in for Papa's death and is tapped for the Presidency of San Lorenzo. Lured by sex symbol Mona, he accepts, but before he can take office, ice-nine breaks loose, freezing land and sea. Bokonon, the aged existentialist residing in the jungle as counter to the strong man, formulates a religion that makes up for life altogether: since the natives are miserable and there is little hope for changing their lot, he takes advantage of the release of ice-nine to bring them a happy death. The narrator's karass is at last made clear by Bokonon himself, leaving him to commit a final blasphemy against whoever is up there. A riddle on the meaning of meaninglessness or vice versa in a devastation-oriented era, with science-fiction figures on the prowl and political-ologies lanced. Spottily effective.
Pub Date: March 18, 1963
ISBN: 038533348X
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1963
An engrossing and fast-paced read that doesn’t hit the mark it aims for.
The relationship between a young debtor and the trillionaire who owns him serves as a parable for the ills of capitalism.
Debut novelist Szpara imagines an only slightly more dystopian United States than the one that exists today, in which the wealth gap has grown so large that the country is more or less split into trillionaires and debtors. Debtors inherit their family's debt, increasing it exponentially over time. To pay it off, many sign up to become slaves for a predetermined amount of time, with the “choice” to inject a drug called Dociline that turns them into a kind of blissful zombie who has no memory, pain, or agency for the duration of their term. The drug is supposed to wear off within two weeks, but when Elisha Wilder’s mother returned from her debt-paying term, it never did, leaving her docile indefinitely. To resolve the rest of his family’s debt, Elisha becomes a Docile to none other than Alex Bishop, the CEO of the company that manufactures Dociline. He invokes his right to refuse the drug, one of the only Dociles ever to do so. Alex enacts a horrifying period of brainwashing in order to modify Elisha’s behavior to mimic that of an “on-med.” The resulting relationship between them is disturbing. As Alex wakes up to his complicity in a broken system—“I am Dr. Frankenstein and I’ve fallen in love with my own monster”—he becomes more sympathetic, for better or worse. As Elisha suffers not only brainwashing, rape, and abuse, but the recovery that must come after, his love for—fixation with, dependence on—Alex poses interesting questions about consent: “Being my own person hurts too much….Why should an opportunity hurt so much?” However, despite excellent pacing and a gripping narrative, Szpara fails to address the history of slavery in America—a history that is race-based and continues to shape the nation. This is a story with fully realized queer characters that is unafraid to ask complicated questions; as a parable, it functions well. But without addressing this important aspect of the nation and economic structures within which it takes place, it cannot succeed in its takedown of oppressive systems.
An engrossing and fast-paced read that doesn’t hit the mark it aims for.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21615-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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