An ambitious interplanetary tale that’s hampered by haphazard execution.
Aliens, mercenaries, and hyperevolved house cats collide in a drug-fueled, blood-soaked road quest to save the world in Hammond’s SF novel.
Away in the far reaches of space, the planet Halteres is home to the Arca Trochia, an omniscient fungus with the power to transport the world’s violent alien factions to their new chosen dominion: Earth. But there, the hapless and depressive human author Dr. Stanley Ivan Vanderbilt believes that Halteres is just the product of his imagination. Ten years ago, he was unknowingly seeded by the Arca Trochia’s spores, and he wrote about Halteres’ inhabitants as a means to escape from his unfulfilling life. Now, he’s fallen under their influence again, and this time, they’ve compelled him to attach bionic opposable thumbs to his pet cats. Things spiral further out of control when the thumbs trigger an evolutionary leap, granting the cats sentience, psychic abilities, and miraculous biological advancements—but a tenuous grasp of morality, at best. Before long, Vanderbilt is at the mercy of his superpowered predator pets, and he’s also become a target for intergalactic assassins who can hijack human corpses. Injured, out of options, and desperate for a greater purpose, Vanderbilt flees blindly into the heart of the American Southwest. Along for the ride are Ashleigh,a mysterious and deadly vigilante with a souped-up car and a destination that she’s not planning to reveal anytime soon; Vanderbilt’s drug-addled best friend, Xeno; and his capricious feline companion, Patton. Along the way, the humans consume huge amounts of booze and drugs, visit the seedy underbellies of multiple places, find unlikely allies, and leave a gory path of destruction involving earthlings and aliens alike.
The novel employs an odd mix of campy grotesquerie, self-referential gag humor, and convoluted SF concepts, which makes it alternately intriguing and incoherent. Some readers may enjoy its irreverent, absurdist embrace of ultraviolent power fantasies, its hypersexual women who glory in their own objectification, and its grungy, sprawling fictional world, splattered with bodily fluids. Others, however, will find these same aspects rather off-putting, and they’ll feel that certain characters come off as offensive stereotypes. For the most part, Hammond is at his best in moments of stillness, when he allows his players to stop all the quipping and actually explore their connections to the world and one another. The author’s descriptions can be genuinely lovely, as when they address the American landscape, the feeling of being in a car headed nowhere, and the unbearable hugeness of the world in general. However, the novel feels torn between so many premises that none of them feel adequately explained. Several references are made to past events that aren’t elaborated upon, and the author introduces and discards a large number of secondary characters without ever fully fleshing them out. It’s not the most cohesive piece of science fiction, overall, but it is certainly never boring, and fans of its particular style will likely find themselves entertained by its hedonism and gruesome revelry.
An ambitious interplanetary tale that’s hampered by haphazard execution.Pub Date: May 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73398-717-2
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.
Having survived a disastrous deep space mission in 2038, three asteroid miners plan a return to their abandoned ship to save two colleagues who were left behind.
Though bankrolled through a crooked money laundering scheme, their original project promised to put in place a program to reduce the CO2 levels on Earth, ease global warming, and pave the way for the future. The rescue mission, itself unsanctioned, doesn't have a much better chance of succeeding. All manner of technical mishaps, unplanned-for dangers, and cutthroat competition for the precious resources from the asteroid await the three miners. One of them has cancer. The international community opposes the mission, with China, Russia, and the United States sending questionable "observers" to the new space station that gets built north of the moon for the expedition. And then there is Space Titan Jack Macy, a rogue billionaire threatening to grab the riches. (As one character says, "It's a free universe.") Suarez's basic story is a good one, with tense moments, cool robot surrogates, and virtual reality visions. But too much of the novel consists of long, sometimes bloated stretches of technical description, discussions of newfangled financing for "off-world" projects, and at least one unneeded backstory. So little actually happens that fixing the station's faulty plumbing becomes a significant plot point. For those who want to know everything about "silicon photovoltaics" and "orthostatic intolerance," Suarez's latest SF saga will be right up their alley. But for those itching for less talk and more action, the book's many pages of setup become wearing.
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-18363-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Elegiac and elliptical, this slim novel is a sobering read.
Six astronauts on a space station orbit the planet over the course of a single Earth day.
Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth, a space station goes round and round. Over the course of 24 hours, the astronauts inside experience sunrise and sunset 16 times. Though they're supposed to keep their schedules in tune with a normal “daily” routine, they exist in a dream-like liminal space, weightless, out of time, captivated and astonished by the “ringing singing lightness” of the globe always in view. “What would it be to lose this?” is the question that spurs Harvey’s nimble swoops and dives into the minds of the six astronauts (as well as a few of the earthbound characters, past and present). There are gentle eddies of plot: The Japanese astronaut, Chie, has just received word that her elderly mother has died; six other astronauts are currently on their way to a moon landing; a “super-typhoon” barrels toward the Philippines; one of the two cosmonauts, Anton, has discovered a lump on his neck. But overall this book is a meditation, zealously lyrical, about the profundity and precarity of our imperiled planet. It’s surely difficult to write a book in which the main character is a giant rock in space—and the book can feel ponderous at times, especially in the middle—but Harvey’s deliberate slowed-down time and repetitions are entirely the point. Like the astronauts, we are forced to meditate on the notion that “not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s…a universe of sidelines, that there is no centre.” Is this a crisis or an opportunity? Harvey treats this question as both a narrative and an existential dilemma.
Elegiac and elliptical, this slim novel is a sobering read.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802161543
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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