Teenager Ella is shot to death on Earth, only to be reborn as a witch in another world of seemingly friendly, happy fellow witches, but their smiles hide an evil society.
Seventeen-year-old debut author Deann has written a political, moral and racial commentary on U.S. society in the guise of a fantasy novel. Ella, under her witch name of Sunlight Reflecting Off The Moon, re-emerges on the planet Raena, where all seems to be in harmony. Life after death gets even better when her boyfriend joins her from Earth; he’s also a witch and was reborn as Kindness In His Heart. But Sunlight quickly discovers that her new home is a totalitarian society that practices slavery. Her love is tested when she learns that Kindness is the son of the world’s cunning and unscrupulous overlord, who shuts down any sign of opposition. Her Raena parents behave as most Earth parents do; they’re fearful of upsetting the establishment. Sunlight sets out in rebellion, with the television media complicating every step she takes (their similarity to the media on Earth is clear and accurate). Twists in the tale include a Roman gladiator-style fight where the combatants move 10 times faster than humans and where Sunlight’s parents get a chance at redemption. Told in the present tense, with short, sharp uncluttered prose and dialogue, the novel contains elements of great maturity, but the characters need more development. And a nagging, unanswered question is: What happens when the witches die, as they seem to be able to recycle through Earth and other worlds?
A remarkable, entertaining read and a useful political-awareness treatise for thinking teens.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475230864
Page Count: 428
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY | PARANORMAL FICTION | PARANORMAL FANTASY
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
11
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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. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Nobelist Ishiguro returns to familiar dystopian ground with this provocative look at a disturbing near future.
Klara is an AF, or “Artificial Friend,” of a slightly older model than the current production run; she can’t do the perfect acrobatics of the newer B3 line, and she is in constant need of recharging owing to “solar absorption problems,” so much so that “after four continuous days of Pollution,” she recounts, “I could feel myself weakening.” She’s uncommonly intelligent, and even as she goes unsold in the store where she’s on display, she takes in the details of every human visitor. When a teenager named Josie picks her out, to the dismay of her mother, whose stern gaze “never softened or wavered,” Klara has the opportunity to learn a new grammar of portentous meaning: Josie is gravely ill, the Mother deeply depressed by the earlier death of her other daughter. Klara has never been outside, and when the Mother takes her to see a waterfall, Josie being too ill to go along, she asks the Mother about that death, only to be told, “It’s not your business to be curious.” It becomes clear that Klara is not just an AF; she’s being groomed to be a surrogate daughter in the event that Josie, too, dies. Much of Ishiguro’s tale is veiled: We’re never quite sure why Josie is so ill, the consequence, it seems, of genetic editing, or why the world has become such a grim place. It’s clear, though, that it’s a future where the rich, as ever, enjoy every privilege and where children are marshaled into forced social interactions where the entertainment is to abuse androids. Working territory familiar to readers of Brian Aldiss—and Carlo Collodi, for that matter—Ishiguro delivers a story, very much of a piece with his Never Let Me Go, that is told in hushed tones, one in which Klara’s heart, if she had one, is destined to be broken and artificial humans are revealed to be far better than the real thing.
A haunting fable of a lonely, moribund world that is entirely too plausible.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-31817-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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