It’s a bonus that the hero of the piece is a young girl, which ought to serve as inspiration for more than a few readers....
Us 99 percenters will live outside the gates come the future, and it won’t be pretty—especially once the nukes start popping.
Baggott (Girl Talk, 2001, etc.), author of fantasies and light comedies alike, takes a somber turn with her latest, which opens with an exceedingly ugly period “after the Detonations,” a time when some people sicken and die from merely drinking the water and others’ faces simply melt away, where “death is sometimes measured” in the rasping coughs of the survivors who have breathed the nuclear winter. Tucked inside the safety of the Dome, where a privileged few are sheltered, young Partridge is safe. Impudently, though, he steals out into that world to find his mother, or at least find out why she refused to leave the city and take cover with her family. Out there, 16-year-old Pressia is trying to keep out of the clutches of the ugly fascist order that has come into power in a time of emergency. It’s a nasty bunch, given to playing games such as Death Spree, “used...to rid society of the weak,” as one of the impromptu band of resisters formed by Pressia and Partridge says, adding, “It’s really the only kind of sport around here, if you can call it a sport.” That band roams the countryside, gathering knowledge and skills, dodging the many, many baddies and bad circumstances that threaten to do them in, making a fine hero quest among the ruins wrought by both bombs and “the Return to Civility and its legislation.” Read between the lines, and the story acquires timely dimensions, though you need not do so to have good fun with the book. As fantasy novels tend to do, Baggott’s tome labors under heavy influences—not just Tolkien, the lord of the genre, but also Rowling, comparisons with whom are inevitable. William Golding’s and George Orwell's and even H.G. Wells’ spirits hove into view from time to time, too. Yet Baggott is no mimic, and she successfully imagines and populates a whole world, which is the most rigorous test of a fantasy’s success.
It’s a bonus that the hero of the piece is a young girl, which ought to serve as inspiration for more than a few readers. Whether Baggott’s imagined world is one that you’d want to live in is another matter entirely, of course. Damned Detonations!Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4555-0306-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An epic novel of good and evil that may have more ambition than its story can support.
In a dark future where water is scarce and disease runs rampant, a young revolutionary plots the downfall of an authoritarian government.
Readers are forewarned: At more than 700 pages, this slab of dystopian fiction could swallow most epics whole—and this is still just the first entry in a planned trilogy. Where to begin? Let’s start with the literary conceit. The novel posits itself as a work in translation, taken from the Slovnik nonfiction book by fictional “Aleksandr Tuvim.” The real authors are its “translators,” debut novelists Elliott (Comparative Literature/Univ. of Illinois; From The Crooked Timber, 2011, etc.) and Clement, who chime in with the occasional footnote. After something called “The Great Calamity,” the nation has emerged as “The Federated States of America,” divided by seven tribes into seven cities. In the wake of the poisoning of its largest body of water, Joshua City’s people are not only thirsty, but also suffering from “nekrosis,” a flesh-rotting disease. To keep his constituents in line, the malevolent Mayor Adams declares war on another faction in a plot to centralize control. There is an enormous cast, but the book primarily concerns itself with three character arcs. Nikolas Kovalski is our hero figure, a medical student who turns on the system to lead “The Underground” resistance movement as a Che Guevara–like revolutionary thinker. His best friend is Adrian Talbot, a budding young doctor who believes he can do more good inside the system, treating patients. Lastly, there’s Nikolas’ older brother, Marcik Kovalski, who joins the Baikal Guards but later impersonates a dead officer, Gen. Schmidt, becoming the leader of the very army that Nikolas swears to upend. The book operates on an elaborate scale but can be unwieldy in its attempts to shoehorn in political strategy, sci-fi tropes, moods drawn from bleak points in 20th-century history and the occasional romance.
An epic novel of good and evil that may have more ambition than its story can support.Pub Date: March 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940430-20-1
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Dark House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
With its well-built world, vivid characters and suspenseful plot, this book, the first in a planned trilogy, is poised to...
A suspenseful post-apocalyptic adventure about a world cleaved in two.
Hundreds of years ago, the world was destroyed in a blast of fire. Now, just as history has been divided into Before and After, humans have been divided into Alphas and Omegas. Every whole, healthy Alpha child is born with a mutated Omega twin who’s missing an arm or an eye—or has one too many. And when one twin dies, the other dies, instantly, inexplicably, inevitably. Most twins are separated as infants, but Cassandra and her twin, Zach, are both born physically whole, so Cass is able to hide her mutation—the fact that she can see things that haven’t happened yet and places she’s never been. The link between Cass and Zach has the potential to change their world forever, as Zach climbs the ranks of the ruling Alpha Council, and Cass starts to dream about an island where, rumor has it, an Omega resistance is brewing. Debut novelist Haig builds a richly textured world and creates characters who immediately feel real. The suspense of the plot, driven by the fear and anger underlying this unbreakable bond between twins, never flags. Haig’s experience as a poet shows in her writing, which is clear, forceful and laced with bright threads of beauty.
With its well-built world, vivid characters and suspenseful plot, this book, the first in a planned trilogy, is poised to become the next must-read hit.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-6718-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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