This intriguing tale mixing sci-fi and magic should appeal to fans of the series and perhaps attract additional followers.
A series of wars, terrorist attacks, and supposed natural disasters turns out to be created by ultra-wealthy businessmen with the aim of interplanetary takeover in this second installment of a trilogy.
Australian hero David Granger and his friends and family—along with Orack, a powerful, computer-generated hologram—face down a series of scoundrels bent on taking over Earth and possibly the planets Atlantis, Genesis, and Dudgeon. Like some grandiose game of Whac-A-Mole, no sooner do they knock down a nefarious “Mr. Big” than one or more new evil kingpins pop up. Eventually, Granger and his allies once more find themselves in a rousing interplanetary showdown with archvillains Dotoff and the Supreme Commander. But not before the protagonist and his intrepid band elicit the aid of legendary Arthurian magicians Merlin and Morgana. The latter takes Granger; his daughter, Susan; and his son, Robert, on a Christmas-like sleigh ride through time (“They seemed to pop out of a cloud mass and, with a slight bump, settled on rich soft grassy soil...Morgana told them they were at Camelot and the castle was the one King Arthur stole from her. The lake to the side was Loch Lomond”). Meanwhile, Orack continues to evolve from an emotionless machine to a feeling being. Unlike the first volume of the Granger saga, which tied together various episodes in the hero’s life, Johnson’s (Aussie Pilot, 2018) sequel has a more coherent, linear storyline and smoother prose. While the characters, except for Orack, are still somewhat flat, the author does render Granger and company more human than in the first installment, as in this interchange involving the protagonist and Robert: “David turned to face his son, smiled that broad smile...‘Ready as we ever will be, I guess,’ he replied, and they both strode with an identical swagger as they made their way towards the shuttle.” In addition, Johnson certainly has an eye for vivid details. But instead of utilizing his skill building empathetic players or gripping situations, he applies it mostly to describing what the characters eat: “He pan-fried the prawns in garlic and deep-fried two small fillets of fish with some squid in batter. He placed the salad on a large dinner plate and…added a single serving neatly to each plate.”
This intriguing tale mixing sci-fi and magic should appeal to fans of the series and perhaps attract additional followers.Pub Date: July 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5434-0979-6
Page Count: 222
Publisher: XlibrisAU
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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
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