Offbeat global-warming sci-fi that taps the spirit of cowboy romances instead of the usual dystopianism.
In a future wracked by floods and social upheaval, a widower tries to make a new life for himself and his daughter when the continent of Antarctica is thrown open to settlement in Lanning’s (A Spider Sat Beside Her, 2017) second book in a planned trilogy.
Climate change has gone unremedied by greedy corporate interests, causing rising sea levels and mass flooding in the United States. The superrich live in well-guarded enclaves while crime is rampant in the rest of America. Such crime claimed the life of the wife of John Barrous, a former corporate worker who’s now disenchanted by the system. He takes his adolescent daughter with him to a place where one might create a functioning, free-market democracy: Antarctica. Global warming has made it habitable and arable, and the United Nations allows a sanctioned, if dangerous, “land rush” for aspiring farmer-settlers, much like Oklahoma in the Old West. In the mostly wide-open frontier, where outlaws and stampedes are real dangers, John stakes a claim and finds a potential love interest in Lowry Walker, a strong-willed woman with a painful past who’s equally determined to keep Antarctica free of mega-capitalist exploitation. With little alteration, this story could well have been set in pioneer days. Instead of a rapacious railroad baron, there’s Napoleon-admiring villain Lorenzo Durant, complete with a robotic horse; he’s an oligarch intent on selling the nascent nation out to corrupt Russian interests. References to melted ice caps, politics, and a multicultural supporting cast keeps the narrative feeling current, but underneath, it’s an emotional, retro-feeling prairie romance in which the two homesteader leads circle each other but just can’t commit, like folks in a country-and-western ballad. It may be a mixed bag for sci-fi fans expecting epic hard science, spectacular worldbuilding, cool technology, and mind-blowing concepts instead of achy-breaky hearts trying to do right in a new heartland. But the oater atmosphere is rendered without genre self-consciousness, unlike Andre Norton’s Beast Master series, for example. Here, the comfortable Wild West formula, sure pacing, and sympathetic protagonists take well to the Antarctic topsoil.
Offbeat global-warming sci-fi that taps the spirit of cowboy romances instead of the usual dystopianism.Pub Date: April 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991210-2-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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