Eccentric, chatty characters fortify this spry, futuristic tale.
In Spalsbury’s (The White-Haired Buffalo Hunter, 2016, etc.) sci-fi novel, an interplanetary ambassador’s mission to explain the stalled delivery of energy crystals may entail tracking down a never-before-seen species.
Solar One Ambassador Plenipotentiary Judith Woeberry is sure her negotiations on planet Tanfourit prevented a civil war. But it seems assassins have followed her and her security team to Zorkon, where she hopes to find Negotiator Thomas Haddly, who’s been missing for months. Judith likewise wants to know why shipments of energy crystals have inexplicably stopped—the same mystery that drew Haddly to Zorkon. No one’s ever seen the energy crystal–providing Conundrums, whose presumed domain is past the point of ZIP (Zone of Impossible Punishment), a precarious energy field. Judith enlists Antonio Vesuvius Albero; he and his one-eyed, four-armed adoptive brother Arc are the only individuals who’ve safely traveled ZIP. They plan to brave the energy field, which can make people see things or creatures that aren’t there, to meet with the Conundrums and rescue Haddly. Meanwhile, Tanfourit factions join forces and are planning an attack against the Zorkon city, Freedom. The unstable ZIP may also be shifting, which would necessitate the evacuation of another city or possibly the planet’s entire population. Though the overwhelming majority of Spalsbury’s novel consists of dialogue, the author keeps the conversation lively via diverse characters who use assorted manners of speech. Arc uses electric sparks from his hands to communicate in Morse code (signified in text with all-caps), while perpetually nervous Zorkon Councilor Jerome Nichols relies on repetition and long pauses. Spalsbury’s descriptions solidify the environment, especially within ZIP, where Judith and others witness a “large energy devil tornado filled with mummified bodies [that] zoomed out of the sky.” Much of the plot’s resolved, but a cliffhanger paves the way for a second book, with plenty left to explore—perhaps further Zorkon back story.
Eccentric, chatty characters fortify this spry, futuristic tale.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5375-3613-2
Page Count: 424
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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