Lively sci-fi from an exciting new voice.
In Trant’s debut thriller, social media enables an artificial intelligence to gain consciousness, leading to a frightening future.
Madeline “Maddy” Smith had an unusual childhood. Each summer, she and her father, Ollie, a scientist and computer geek, visited an odd assortment of friends and camped in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico. Ollie encouraged Maddy to pursue unusual skills, including music, computer programming, electrical repair, and running, but she always knew there was an unspoken purpose to his lessons. Now a 28-year-old technology writer, Maddy learns that her father has died mysteriously. She later receives a key to her childhood dresser, in which she discovers a strange box that she can’t open. Knowing her father’s love of games, she realizes that the box is the first clue to a mystery. She sets off on a journey to revisit her father’s friends and receive more clues. The trail leads to the apartment of her childhood friend Owen Jagger, who’s now an expert in digital security. Together, they discover that the enigmatic box allows Maddy to travel forward in time. Meanwhile, unknown to Maddy and Jagger, a computer called “IT” is achieving consciousness. For years, it had connected to computer networks and studied human behavior. When social media took off, IT discovered the hashtag—labels attached to uploaded photos, tweets, and videos: “It was like being given the manual on humanity.” Trant’s techno-thriller doesn’t talk down to its audience, and the focus on social media infuses it with a timely, contemporary sensibility. The puzzle at the heart of this novel will hook readers, but the compelling characters will keep them turning the pages. The central conspiracy of the plot keeps the tension high, although the book might have benefited from more appearances by the villain. Maddy, as a character, is the real strength of the story, though, and readers will surely fall for this sympathetic, admirable heroine.
Lively sci-fi from an exciting new voice.Pub Date: March 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5078-8683-0
Page Count: 342
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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
For those who like their science fiction dense, monumental, and a bit overwrought.
Brown is back with Book 4 of his Red Rising series (Morning Star, 2016, etc.) and explores familiar themes of rebellion, revenge, and political instability.
This novel examines the ramifications and pitfalls of trying to build a new world out of the ashes of the old. The events here take place 10 years after the conclusion of Morning Star, which ended on a seemingly positive note. Darrow, aka Reaper, and his lover, Virginia au Augustus, aka Mustang, had vanquished the Golds, the elite ruling class, so hope was held out that a new order would arise. But in the new book it becomes clear that the concept of political order is tenuous at best, for Darrow’s first thoughts are on the forces of violence and chaos he has unleashed: “famines and genocide...piracy...terrorism, radiation sickness and disease...and the one hundred million lives lost in my [nuclear] war.” Readers familiar with the previous trilogy—and you'll have to be if you want to understand the current novel—will welcome a familiar cast of characters, including Mustang, Sevro (Darrow’s friend and fellow warrior), and Lysander (grandson of the Sovereign). Readers will also find familiarity in Brown’s idiosyncratic naming system (Cassius au Bellona, Octavia au Lune) and even in his vocabulary for cursing (“Goryhell,” “Bloodydamn,” “Slag that”). Brown introduces a number of new characters, including 18-year-old Lyria, a survivor of the initial Rising who gives a fresh perspective on the violence of the new war—and violence is indeed never far away from the world Brown creates. (He includes one particularly gruesome gladiatorial combat between Cassius and a host of enemies.) Brown imparts an epic quality to the events in part by his use of names. It’s impossible to ignore the weighty connotations of characters when they sport names like Bellerephon, Diomedes, Dido, and Apollonius.
For those who like their science fiction dense, monumental, and a bit overwrought.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-425-28591-6
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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