A twisty time hop that never fully escapes the shadow of its influences.
An attempt on her partner’s life forces a time-hopping cop to go on the lam in search of answers.
When she was just 6 years old, Miriam Randle witnessed her twin brother's murder, and the event has colored her entire life. If Jeremy had lived, her mother would not have abandoned her. She would not have had to manage her father's alcoholism on her own, and there would be someone else to care for her estranged mother now, in the wake of an early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis. At 26, Miriam works as a “travel agent”: a private law enforcement officer who goes back in time to stop murders before they happen. Hours after a mission goes sideways, she narrowly misses the chance to stop a would-be assassin from gravely injuring her partner, Vax. These back-to-back failures would be enough to unsettle any agent, but they fall on the 20th anniversary of Jeremy’s death. The ensuing debriefing reveals Miriam and Vax’s affair as well as his belief that Miriam may be losing her grip. All signs indicate that Vax’s assailant is a rogue agent, but the duo's handler does not give Miriam time to testify. He fires her mere moments before the killer strikes again, leaving her in possession of a literal smoking gun. Shades of classic science fiction permeate Bellin's neonoir, to both positive and negative effect. The central mystery keeps the pages turning well into the third act, but the author doesn't provide readers with the necessary tools to stitch the case together for themselves, resulting in several eleventh-hour reveals that feel unearned. In spite of the lack of signposting, however, readers familiar with Bellin's SF predecessors will spot many of the plot twists coming from miles away. That may please eagle-eyed speculative-fiction fans, but Bellin's decision to forego the trail of breadcrumbs may disappoint readers who approach this genre blender as a thriller.
A twisty time hop that never fully escapes the shadow of its influences.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781915202468
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Angry Robot Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning.
An intrepid teen encounters the dark secrets of the elite in her climate-ravaged world in this translated work from South Korea.
Sixteen-year-old Jeon Chobahm is shocked to learn that Goh Haeri, the beloved reality TV star who happens to be Chobahm’s look-alike, just died by suicide—and also that she’s being asked to become Haeri’s secret replacement. In their frozen, post-apocalyptic world, Chobahm, like everyone around her, leads a bleak life. She bundles up daily against the dangerous cold and toils in a power plant. But now she’ll live Haeri’s cushy life in Snowglobe, an exclusive, glass-dome-enclosed community, where the climate is mild, and the resident actors’ lives are broadcast as entertainment for those in the open world. As glamorous as life there may seem, however, Chobahm quickly learns that there’s a sinister underbelly: People are killed off when they’re no longer useful, and there’s something strange about Haeri’s family dynamics. As she meets a host of new companions, including Yi Bonwhe, the heir of Snowglobe’s founding family, Chobahm discovers a devastating secret and embarks on a risky plan to expose the truth. Climate change, societal inequity, and the ethics of escaping from our own lives by watching others’ are addressed in this intelligent, absorbing book. Chobahm is a complex character inhabiting a strongly developed world, and her compassion, ambition, outrage, and sorrow ring true.
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning. (Dystopian. 12-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593484975
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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