Well up to the high standards established by this intriguing series.
Continuing the deep-space adventures of Adm. John "Black Jack" Geary and company (Invincible, 2012, etc.).
Having fought off the alien Kicks and captured one of their colossal battleships, renamed Invincible, and acquiring allies in the form of the alien Dancers, Geary is ready to return with his battered fleet to the Alliance home worlds. But first they must pass through the Midway star system, where ex-CEOs Iceni and Drakon have defeated the remnants of the Syndic loyalists. Unfortunately, it appears that the Syndics have invented a method of switching off the hyperspace gates necessary for rapid transit, necessitating a tiresome series of jumps through star systems where the Syndic Empire still clings to power. While theoretically the Alliance is no longer at war with the Empire, the latter is keen to do everything in its power to annoy, harass, threaten and otherwise disrupt Geary’s passage. The Syndics’ secondary objective is to capture or destroy Invincible which, though packed with potentially invaluable alien technology, is presently an inert hulk requiring most of Geary’s own battleships to tow it. The vast ship is also haunted by ghosts that, while intangible, are psychically all too real. Once again, the visceral action comes fast and furious as the fleet attempts to evade or disrupt the traps the Syndics have laid. Geary proves a model commander, prone to doubts and moments of weakness, refreshingly willing to be advised by his subordinates, especially his wife, Tanya Desjani, who captains his flagship, and Emissary Victoria Rione, whose sharp political skills will prove invaluable.
Well up to the high standards established by this intriguing series.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-425-26050-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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