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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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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