An inventive and emotionally resonant work of politically minded speculative fiction.
A rebel takes to the airwaves in a dystopian future America in Zienty’s SF novel, the second in a series.
For the past few weeks, a man has been following Angel and her family around. They live in the town of Bayfield, on the banks of Lake Superior, in a dystopian successor nation to the United States known as the Protectorate, governed by the authoritarian Galt Corporation. When Angel finally confronts the man, he tells her he’s a pathfinder, “lookin’ to find a way to remake the world.” Path, as she comes to know him, wants Angel’s “vox”—her voice—for use on a voxcast, a kind of pirate radio show that broadcasts anti-corporate messages into the night. (The previous speaker, known as Word, has lost his voice.) It’s a serendipitous meeting, since Angel and her companion, Kuba, have been listening to Word’s voxcast for months. Angel (who, with Kuba, is raising her daughter, Lark) has a history of rebellious activity, though she attempts to conceal her true sympathies from the watchful eyes of the Corporation. She agrees to join the voxcast, which is issued from a hidden room in a safe house occupied by two decoy mannequins, which give the impression the house is occupied by an elderly couple. At first, she plans to read a vague script written by Word, but she soon realizes that she has a very specific political goal she’d like to see realized: “In her waking dreams, it’s clear, easy, straightforward. Free the ovas, the fems of the Breeder Islands. To honor her mother. To remove that cog from the reproductive wheel of Galt.” Can Angel, in her new role as the Night Prophet, inspire the change she wishes to see in the Protectorate? Or will she merely bring down the wrath of the Galt Corporation, risking the fragile life she’s built for her daughter?
Zienty has a knack for fashioning original futurespeak that doesn’t call too much attention to itself, as here, where she describes a typical Bayfield “fem”: “She’s twisting her sleek tail of ice gold hair while she waits for her dark-haired companion to open the security lock that prevents her sweet, swag top-of-the-line fat-tire ride from being pedaled away by an enterprising Bartertown rat.” That said, some elements are perhaps a bit too cute; the rebels refer to one another as “guevaras” and still celebrate Martin Luther King Day, which, according to Path, “marks the birthdate of an ancient prophet of the Old Republic. A man who knew the beauty and power of words…Although a bit too pacifist for my taste.” The book’s highly immersive quality, and its deep interest in the inner lives of its characters, sets it apart from more plot-driven and derivative dystopian fare. This second installment of the series may prove difficult to get into for those unfamiliar with the previous volume—it starts slowly, and Angel’s motivations take some time to reveal themselves—but those who are continuing with the story will undoubtedly enjoy this new entry.
An inventive and emotionally resonant work of politically minded speculative fiction.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781733688130
Page Count: 414
Publisher: Shaherazade Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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