Structurally unsatisfying, with extended philosophical arguments, a lengthy coda once the main situation's been resolved,...
Concluding the extraordinary far-future space opera begun with The Golden Age (2002) and continued with The Phoenix Exultant (p. 277).
Phaethon of Rhadamanthus has regained control of his wonderful spaceship, the Phoenix Exultant, but, according to all laws and agreements, must permit the owner, Xenophon, to come aboard, even though Phaethon suspects the huge, cold, squidlike Neptunian of being an agent of the Nothing Sophotect, an artificial intelligence representing the Silent Oecumene set up by rebels near the black hole Cygnus X-1. Long ago the rebels sent a cryptic message and fell silent, having apparently taken up residence inside the black hole itself. Xenophon insists that the Golden Oecumene's sophotects are evil, intent only on controlling the universe into the farthest conceivable future, whereas the Silent Oecumene represents freedom for humanity to expand through the galaxy. Though the Neptunian's arguments are plausible, Phaethon refuses to yield control of the ship, because Xenophon's activities are cloaked in a code that Phaethon is unable to translate; somehow, too, he's signaling to an object inside the sun itself! Is the Nothing Sophotect hiding inside the sun, instructing Xenophon via black-hole engineering incomprehensible to Phaethon and the entire Golden Oecumene? Who's lying? What is the significance of Phaethon's still-missing memories?
Structurally unsatisfying, with extended philosophical arguments, a lengthy coda once the main situation's been resolved, and little narrative momentum, plus what appears to be stage-setting for yet more sequels: Tremendously flawed, certainly, but set forth with such effortless intelligence and confident verisimilitude that the author might be a denizen of the remote future, reporting back to us in the distant past.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-765-30756-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
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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