Solid action but a dystopia left unexplored—though later series entries are primed to do just that.
An intelligence expert teams up with survivalists when a bizarre weather event prefaces a plan to stir up chaos among American citizens in this techno-thriller.
Simon Redfall’s been off the grid for two years, hated by the U.S. public almost as much as his wife, Tessa, convicted of gunning down 64 people. After someone spots him at Tessa’s execution, he narrowly escapes a mob of the victims’ families, distracted by a sudden downpour of thick red rain. He gets away relatively unscathed thanks to prepper Tally Wickie, whose community and compound, Pandora, reside on her farm and who needs Simon’s help. The founder and CEO of now-bankrupt security conglomerate Ghost Works, Simon may be able to unravel the mystery behind the deaths and disappearances of scientists (including Tally’s grandparents) over the last two decades. Tally also notes a recent “movement” in weather-related fields surrounding company RaineTech, likely confirmed by the rainfall that’s apparently interrupting communications. It only gets worse: Tally’s brother Wyatt, with his own camp, Jericho, gets an untraceable UPS delivery of munitions. Someone, it seems, is trying to pit factions against one another and generate bedlam in the streets. Gen. Nate Rawlings sends Nighthawk—essentially a Ghost Works replacement—to find Simon, who in turn can help locate RaineTech CEO Jeffrey Hansen. Simon already has his hands full, however, when Jericho faces a full-on assault. Falconer (Redfall: Freedom Fighters, 2016, etc.) employs his near-future setting to great effect, most disturbingly with Tessa’s televised execution. A redesigned lethal injection prolongs the condemned woman’s torment, all to appease a bloodthirsty audience. The book’s latter half, somewhat disappointingly, shifts focus from the dystopian backdrop to action, particularly once armed men abduct Pandora preppers. But numerous subplots give the narrative momentum, such as Tally’s reputed evidence that Tessa may not have been responsible for the mass killing. The story can be repetitive; for example, three different people from three separate groups each threaten to “bleed” someone. Nevertheless, Falconer’s dense plot ties up at least one subplot, with copious questions remaining: who, for one, is truly behind Operation Trident, the terroristlike strike that started with red rain?
Solid action but a dystopia left unexplored—though later series entries are primed to do just that.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5234-4026-9
Page Count: 298
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
