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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.
In the first volume of a trilogy, a fresh cataclysm besets a physically unstable world whose ruling society oppresses its most magically powerful inhabitants.
The continent ironically known as the Stillness is riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and periodically suffers from Seasons, civilization-destroying tectonic catastrophes. It’s also occupied by a small population of orogenes, people with the ability to sense and manipulate thermal and kinetic energy. They can quiet earthquakes and quench volcanoes…but also touch them off. While they’re necessary, they’re also feared and frequently lynched. The “lucky” ones are recruited by the Fulcrum, where the brutal training hones their powers in the service of the Empire. The tragic trap of the orogene's life is told through three linked narratives (the link is obvious fairly quickly): Damaya, a fierce, ambitious girl new to the Fulcrum; Syenite, an angry young woman ordered to breed with her bitter and frighteningly powerful mentor and who stumbles across secrets her masters never intended her to know; and Essun, searching for the husband who murdered her young son and ran away with her daughter mere hours before a Season tore a fiery rift across the Stillness. Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun, 2012, etc.) is utterly unflinching; she tackles racial and social politics which have obvious echoes in our own world while chronicling the painfully intimate struggle between the desire to survive at all costs and the need to maintain one’s personal integrity. Beneath the story’s fantastic trappings are incredibly real people who undergo intense, sadly believable pain.
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-22929-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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