An absorbing, character-driven consideration of the unexpected cost of recovering lost youth.
In Charles’ debut novel, middle-aged people awaken in younger bodies, leading to massive disruptions in their personal lives and society in general.
One day, 23 years ago, everyone who was celebrating a 50th birthday awakened looking half their age (“It appears there has been some unexplainable biological event,” a news anchor reports). This phenomenon, known as the Reset, is now a common occurrence. Like all those inching toward their 50th, lawyer Tom Miller of Holly Springs, North Carolina, can choose to go through the Reset (it only works if you’re asleep at some point during the first two hours of your birthday; if you stay awake from midnight to two, you’ll see no change at all). Tom plans to rent an apartment and live on his own post-Reset, away from his wife, Elena, and their three children, the youngest of whom is a year away from graduating high school. Elena will go through her own Reset in a mere 18 months, but Tom wants to experience the youth he feels he’s missed due to his lifelong responsibilities. He promises to return once Elena Resets, but his plan still doesn’t go over well with his family members, especially the couple’s oldest child, Jack. Meanwhile, Pastor Randall Wilkes was shocked by his wife’s Reset back when the phenomenon first began. He sees it as something demonic and has spent years running the Awakened Church, which is vehemently against the Reset. The pastor and the Awakeners aren’t exactly wholesome; years ago, they kidnapped several people close to 50 and forced them to miss their Reset by keeping them awake. So, the Millers are understandably concerned when that same church seems to be drawing Jack in.
Charles’ measured story cannily zeroes in on the repercussions of the Reset rather than the “miracle” itself: Jack is a law student with a job lined up at his father’s firm, but he, like many 20-somethings, is upset by his limited opportunities, as those from the older generation no longer retire. Other characters, such as Tom’s best friend and neighbor, Walt, have vastly different experiences: As someone with multiple sclerosis who uses a wheelchair, Walt debates Resetting; he would get a chance to walk his engaged daughter down the aisle, but he knows his MS will return in a matter of years. Tom, the protagonist, is hard to warm up to—his “mid-life crisis” (as Elena rightly dubs it) is selfish, and getting a bachelor pad strongly implies he aims to sleep with other women. Still, the effects of his choices on Elena and each one of their kids beget enthralling melodrama. (Will Elena use the time away from her husband to pursue her own passions?) The Awakened Church is a relatively light (though unnerving) presence throughout the narrative. Their machinations build suspense as the members are determined to stop the “second Reset,” in which the first wave of Reset people will soon hit 50 for the second time and may or may not Reset again. The final act centers around a gratifying resolution for the characters and also drops a few genuine surprises. An absorbing, character-driven consideration of the unexpected cost of recovering lost youth.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2026
ISBN: 9798995832805
Page Count: 327
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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