Superlative characters enliven this richly detailed historical adventure.
Modern-day siblings travel back through time to war-torn, Nazi-occupied Poland in Elle’s debut SF novel.
Twenty-two-year-old Blanca Hernandez and her younger brother, Mateo, tour the Texas college Mateo will soon be attending. An apparent earthquake suddenly hits, followed by an explosion. When the smoke clears, Blanca, Mateo, and other bystanders find themselves in another place altogether—1943 Poland, to be precise. Scientists at the college had been working on a project creating “time jumps” that went awry, and now the siblings are collateral damage, caught in the midst of an ongoing war. They’re soon dodging Nazis, vicious wildlife, and explosives dropped from above. They manage to connect with stranded, English-speaking German pilot Otto Zimmler, who can help them navigate the unfamiliar landscape. All Blanca and Mateo want is to make it to the coast, where a boat can take them to safety. While they’re under the threat of both German and Russian soldiers, they struggle to keep their fascinating origin a secret. The author wisely keeps the time-travel details simple and doesn’t unnecessarily complicate the story of heroes under fire. The remarkable cast drives the narrative: Eye-opening flashbacks highlight Blanca’s tumultuous past as a combat medic in Afghanistan and humanize Otto as the reader witnesses a loathsome ideology enshroud his youth (“…a soldier proudly brandished a red flag with a twisted black symbol in the middle. Otto was too young to know what it was, but it impressed him as much as anything had impressed him in his life”). Nazism is the indisputable villain here, but this is also a story of survival, and Elle fills her swiftly-paced tale with harrowing scenes that, sadly, not every character walks away from. Fortunately, lighter moments occasionally alleviate the grim tone; it’s amusing to see the travelers frequently refer to Mateo’s just-purchased college history book to get background on the era. The final act is a surprising, gleefully frenzied ride to the end.
Superlative characters enliven this richly detailed historical adventure.Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781956452457
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Arts Ink Ltd DBACentral Park South
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.
The fourth and final volume in the Terra Ignota series, a science fantasy set on a 25th-century Earth where people affiliate by philosophy and interest instead of geography.
For the first time in centuries, the world is seized by war—once the combatants actually figure out how to fight one. While rivalries among the Hives provide several motives for conflict, primary among them is whether J.E.D.D. Mason, the heir to various political powers and apparently a god from another universe in human form, should assume absolute rule over the world and transform it for the better. Gathering any large group to further the progress of the war or the possibility for peace is hampered by the loss of the world transit system of flying cars and the global communications network, both shut down by parties unknown, indicating a hidden and dangerous faction manipulating the situation for its own ends. As events play out, they bear a strong resemblance to aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey, suggesting the persistent influence of Bridger, a deceased child who was also probably a god. Is tragedy inevitable, or can the characters defy their apparent fates? This often intriguing but decidedly peculiar chimera of a story seems to have been a philosophical experiment, but it’s difficult to determine just what was being tested. The worldbuilding—part science, part magic—doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny, and the political structure defies comprehension. The global government consists of an oligarchy of people deeply and intimately connected by love and hate on a scale which surpasses the royal dynasties of old, and it includes convicted felons among their number. Perhaps the characters are intended as an outsized satiric comment on the way politicians embrace expediency over morality or personal feelings, but these supposedly morally advanced potentates commit so many perverse atrocities against one another it is difficult to engage with them as people. At times, they seem nearly as alien as J.E.D.D. Mason.
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7806-4
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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