Should particularly appeal to the more youthful section of the audience, devotees of the Kevin Anderson–Brian Herbert epics...
Second in a just-about independently intelligible alien-warfare trilogy (Conquest, 2014) from Connolly (the Charlie Parker mysteries, etc.) and wife Ridyard, who offer a helpful short summary in the first couple of pages.
Advanced human-aliens, the Illyri, have conquered the Earth. Internally, the Illyri Military and the Diplomatic Corps tussle for dominance and plot to ally themselves with a third power, the Nairene Sisterhood, a secretive female society of knowledge-brokers—who bear an uncomfortable resemblance to Frank Herbert’s Bene Gesserit. Resistance to the conquest, however, smolders, particularly in Scotland, where Syl Hellais, the governor’s daughter and the first Illyri to be born on Earth, raged against the constraints imposed on her. Syl—having learned that many senior Illyri are infected with an alien parasite that apparently enhances their abilities—escaped and became involved with resistance fighter Paul Kerr. Having been captured, Paul and others agreed to be trained as fighters for the Illyri and were sent millions of light-years away. Syl was sent to join the Sisterhood in their convent, the Marque, a moon orbiting the Illyri home world. Paul vows, despite all obstacles, to return and claim Syl, but he soon learns that Illyri politics are vastly more complex and dangerous than anybody on Earth dreamed—and that there exists another alien race of unknown powers and purpose. Syl, meanwhile, concealing her immense psychic powers, learns that the Sisterhood is encouraging younger sisters to develop psychic powers and to employ them with sadistic cruelty. And they know more about the alien parasites than anybody suspects. This satisfyingly complex backdrop spins up into an intriguing web of plots and mysteries as the main characters grow along with the story, along with virile if sometimes rather implausible action. More disappointing is the way the authors allow an initially taut narrative to accumulate flab and crisp prose to degenerate into hackneyed gloats and phrases.
Should particularly appeal to the more youthful section of the audience, devotees of the Kevin Anderson–Brian Herbert epics and suchlike.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5715-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
