A post-disaster fairy tale that’s light on plot and heavy on improbable coincidences but a thoroughly enjoyable exercise in...
The Big Apple persists, despite climactic disasters that have flooded the lower floors of New York City's buildings and turned the metropolis into a so-called “SuperVenice.”
Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City meets George Turner’s Drowning Towers in this series of interconnected narratives concerning the residents of the Met Life tower, a historic skyscraper converted into a co-op. The head of the co-op board and the building’s super fend off an offer to purchase the building from a shadowy corporation so determined to buy that they’re willing to sabotage the building’s infrastructure. Two coders living in an inflatable structure on the building’s farm floor are held prisoner in an underwater container after one of them hacks the financial system. A tough cop investigates the coders’ disappearance and links it to a wide-ranging conspiracy. An ambitious trader tries altruism and civic improvement to impress a woman. A pair of “water rats” (homeless boys with a boat) search for sunken gold in the Bronx. And a media star famous for her “assisted migrations” tries to transport polar bears in her dirigible from the warming Arctic to cooler Antarctica. This offers parallels to Robinson’s previous novel, Aurora, which also featured an ecosystem in distress (in that case, a generational spaceship). Of course, this being Robinson, there are plenty of infodumps, mostly on climate, finance, and history, with some trenchant commentary on both gentrification and the perils inherent in ignoring human damage to the environment. But he also lightens the mood with a heavy dose of witty epigrams, including two delightfully relevant quotes from the children’s classic The Pushcart War. And exploring this vastly changed cityscape, where familiar streets are replaced by skybridges and subways by vaporettos, is great fun.
A post-disaster fairy tale that’s light on plot and heavy on improbable coincidences but a thoroughly enjoyable exercise in worldbuilding, written with a cleareyed love for the city's past, present, and future.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-26234-7
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.
Video-game players embrace the quest of a lifetime in a virtual world; screenwriter Cline’s first novel is old wine in new bottles.
The real world, in 2045, is the usual dystopian horror story. So who can blame Wade, our narrator, if he spends most of his time in a virtual world? The 18-year-old, orphaned at 11, has no friends in his vertical trailer park in Oklahoma City, while the OASIS has captivating bells and whistles, and it’s free. Its creator, the legendary billionaire James Halliday, left a curious will. He had devised an elaborate online game, a hunt for a hidden Easter egg. The finder would inherit his estate. Old-fashioned riddles lead to three keys and three gates. Wade, or rather his avatar Parzival, is the first gunter (egg-hunter) to win the Copper Key, first of three. Halliday was obsessed with the pop culture of the 1980s, primarily the arcade games, so the novel is as much retro as futurist. Parzival’s great strength is that he has absorbed all Halliday’s obsessions; he knows by heart three essential movies, crossing the line from geek to freak. His most formidable competitors are the Sixers, contract gunters working for the evil conglomerate IOI, whose goal is to acquire the OASIS. Cline’s narrative is straightforward but loaded with exposition. It takes a while to reach a scene that crackles with excitement: the meeting between Parzival (now world famous as the lead contender) and Sorrento, the head of IOI. The latter tries to recruit Parzival; when he fails, he issues and executes a death threat. Wade’s trailer is demolished, his relatives killed; luckily Wade was not at home. Too bad this is the dramatic high point. Parzival threads his way between more ’80s games and movies to gain the other keys; it’s clever but not exciting. Even a romance with another avatar and the ultimate “epic throwdown” fail to stir the blood.
Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-88743-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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