Part Matrix, part Lord of the Flies, and thoroughly engaging in its own right.
In Scotson’s (Planets Falling: Earth and Mars Saga, 2014) imaginative dystopian sci-fi novel, a young boy is taken out of a troubled childhood to train as an elite soldier.
A seemingly omniscient governing power called the Collective sends juveniles to train as special forces operatives on “Old 89,” an island in an undisclosed location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Franky Robinson is but one of a small crew of 10-year-old kids who have been selected on account of their broken family lives and potential. Each boy is implanted with a chip behind his ear and given a tailor-made tablet device that uses artificial intelligence to develop an individual’s skill set. Franky has been earmarked as a future leader, and his tablet, nicknamed Yellowcake, is programmed accordingly. Without question, the boys comply with the daily duties—a brutal regimen of martial arts and weapons training—set by the sinister Collective. But when Yellowcake begins contacting Franky via his thoughts, the boy’s regimented life on Old 89 begins to fall apart. Yellowcake allows Franky to access classified information about the Collective by entering a virtual world that resembles a beach. Franky learns of the Collective’s lethal treatment of dissidents and also of a rebellion led by escaped trainees. Further afield, humankind is on the brink of World War III. It is left to Franky to distinguish truth from lie and lead his comrades accordingly. Can he trust Yellowcake or is she another aspect of the Collective’s deception? The constant state of instability and unknowingness is what fuels this intriguing novel. Furthermore, Scotson’s idea of the development and implications of new technologies is nothing short of ingenious. Language is witty and suitably clipped: “Air support is like having a big hammer, which is useful if the nail is big but can lead to a sore thumb if the job is delicate.” At times, dialogue lacks a natural cadence, but that detracts little from this well-conceived page-turner.
Part Matrix, part Lord of the Flies, and thoroughly engaging in its own right.Pub Date: Dec. 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692357453
Page Count: 302
Publisher: garveybooks
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
