Added bonus: a clear break in the middle makes this feel like two books in one. (Fantasy. 12-16)
Eight years after the fall of Earth, survival is the name of the game.
In a near-future world controlled by the mechanized aliens known as the Assembly, where most adults have vanished and teens slowly succumb to the mind-controlling "Tone" that calls them to an unknown fate, 20-year-old Holt Hawkins is a bounty hunter with a price on his own head. To clear that price, he sets out after Freebooter Mira Toombs, who has an even higher price on her head. Her magical artifacts from the Strange Lands nearly prove too much for him. After rescuing 8-year-old amnesiac Zoey from a crashed Assembly ship, Holt and Mira set aside their differences and head for Midnight City to clear Mira’s name amid the factions of kids and preteens who vie for points like currency and barter artifacts. The Assembly is on their tail, however, and everyone seems bent on their destruction…and Zoey is far more than she appears. Mitchell’s prose debut, the first in a dystopian sci-fantasy series, is an imaginative mix of danger and humor. Some descriptions can get repetitive, and the mechanism of the Strange Lands artifacts is a bit murky, but the action will keep readers turning the pages.
Added bonus: a clear break in the middle makes this feel like two books in one. (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1250009074
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
paper 0-15-600601-4 Nebula’s 1997 award-winners and ballot finalists are presented by Willis, who takes over from last year’s editor, Jack Dann. Representing Best Novel, there’s an excerpt from Vonda N. McIntyre’s splendid historical fantasy, The Moon and the Stars, while Jerry Oltion’s ghostly Apollo capsule, “Abandon in Place,” wins Best Novella, and “The Flowers of Aulit Prison,” Nancy Kress’s investigation of crime, society, and reality, has captured Best Novelette. The Best Short Story Award goes to “Sister Emily’s Lightship” from Jane Yolen. Also on show are impressive finalist yarns from James Patrick Kelly, Michael Swanwick, Gregory Feely, James Alan Gardner, and Karen Joy Fowler. The Rhysling Award Winners (for poetry) are W. Gregory Stewart and Terry A. Garey. Nelson Bond, represented by his story “The Bookshop,” has accepted Author Emeritus status (you’re forgiven if you’ve never heard of him). And Poul Anderson, virtuoso of short- and mid-length fiction—his typically brilliant “The Martyr” appears here—thoroughly deserves his Grand Master Award. Nonfiction enthusiasts, however, are in for a thumping disappointment. Maybe somebody decided that last year’s opinionated and thoroughly refreshing growls and hisses Simply Wouldn’t Do. But for whatever reason, 1997’s nonfiction is just anodyne scraps (the redoubtable Kim Stanley Robinson honorably excepted). No obituaries appear, despite the passing of Jerome Bixby (author of several all-time great short stories, plus a couple of the finest Star Trek scripts), of innovative editor/writer Judith Merrill, and of Australia’s greatest (and vastly underrated) SF novelist, George Turner. Even Bill Warren’s eagerly anticipated dissection of the year’s movies has been ditched. Terrific fiction, a Bronx cheer for the nonfiction.
Pub Date: April 29, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-100372-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
($24.00; Feb.; 240 pp.; 0-06-105118-7): What can possibly beat space hero Jim Endicott's previous adventures? In Step Into Chaos (1999), and its predecessors, he killed his father, got killed himself, then was resurrected and transformed into a godlike entity, the Omega Point. But since god-Jim went back in time to alter his own past and unkill his father, that all happened in another universe. So now there are two Jims in two universes undergoing different trials and adventures. Will they meet? Stick with Shatner's latest interminable series and you'll find out - probably - eventually….
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-105118-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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