Relishable lead characters front an enthusiastic, jaunty adventure.
In Aubin’s sci-fi series opener, a young cadet, part of a mission to save humanity by finding planets to colonize, stumbles onto a dangerous secret.
Zax, like many other teens, was born on a vessel known simply as the Ship and has trained since he was a child. It’s been millennia since humans, facing extinction on a dying Earth, built the Ship, during which time they’ve searched for habitable planets. Zax is a bright trainee who’s earned enough credits to put him on top of the Leaderboard, making his dream of becoming a pilot a distinct possibility. He’s unfortunately the object of ridicule—he vomits practically on cue during FTL (Faster-Than-Light) Transit. But he proves himself during a refueling operation when an attacking spacecraft surprises the Ship’s fighters. The Flight Boss praises Zax and fellow cadet Kalare for rescuing lives, but Zax earns the ire of trainer Cyrus, who winds up condemned and humiliated. The Boss, impressed by Zax and Kalare, proclaims he’ll mentor one of them, support that could garner the mentored a “gazillion extra points on the Leaderboard”. The two must endure rigorous Marine training, and Zax tries to avoid a revenge-minded Cyrus. They’ll have a chance to scout a new planet, already inhabited by aliens…and something considerably more shocking. Aubin’s debut novel launches a series; it merely touches on numerous elements that will most likely resurface later. Readers get little insight, for example, into the frequently mentioned concept of being “Plugged In,” which involves an implant that links a person to the Ship and allows private communication. Aubin does, however, slowly inject suspense, especially when Zax learns a secret that may be fatal for him to know. Most characters, like Marine officers, are belligerent, undermining Zax and Kalare. But those two are plenty likable. Zax is persistently ambitious and perky, and the talkative Kalare can’t suppress her giggles. The novel uses understandable jargon and sprints through the narrative until the end, when Zax makes a decision that could have drastic consequences—and aptly sets the stage for a sequel.
Relishable lead characters front an enthusiastic, jaunty adventure.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9970708-1-1
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Lekanyane Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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