In this sci-fi debut, time travel exists, but a vicious hierarchy that’s secretly embedded in history seeks to control it.
In Nevada in 2033, former Holifax scientist Eliza Carrefour hosts a group of uninvited guests. The black-garbed men stand in her living room, and their leader, the grizzled Proctor, demands to know the whereabouts of a mysterious man named August. He then addresses Eliza’s 2-year-old son, saying, “You will do great things, child. Or dare I say...you already have.” Eliza and her son just barely escape, heading for a mountain enclave within the Arc Dome Wilderness. There, she meets Reinour “Nour” Delarune, who guards and operates a temporal wave generator—a time machine. Nour says the boy, sent through time, will “inspire the end of wars,” and so Eliza parts with him. He travels to the Lost Aeon, in the 20th millennium B.C.E. The city of New Kressya welcomes him, and there, Eliza’s son, called Nija Masias, enters his late teens. An old soldier named Serros guides him, describing a paradisiacal era when the cities of New and Old Kressya were one and the crystal Cartographer opened all of time to brave travelers. The crystal has been shattered, however, and New Kressya is run by the despotic Aligos and his Revival army. Retrieving the Cartographer’s shards would mean control over history itself. In this brisk, complex tale, Fisher offers a cleareyed look at superpowered rebellion and the looping intricacies of time travel. His sky-fallen, those who’ve come through time, are “baptized by the void,” with shining eyes, strange marks, and abilities like telepathy and telekinesis. The lovely Eserae Sorra is one such teen; Nija (and readers) can’t help falling for her with her “weather-changing smile.” Fisher chops the narrative into succinct flashbacks that reveal life in Old Kressya and how jealousy and fascism split the Utopia. Resistance leader Tresthi Agailia discloses what Aligos will never understand: “What makes us different makes us relevant, essential.” Fisher’s dazzling, cohesive finale should rally those in need of smart, action-oriented sci-fi.
A live-wire tale charged with intelligence, depth, and adventure.Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-1538-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | TIME TRAVEL
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.
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The celebrated author of Between the World and Me (2015) and We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) merges magic, adventure, and antebellum intrigue in his first novel.
In pre–Civil War Virginia, people who are white, whatever their degree of refinement, are considered “the Quality” while those who are black, whatever their degree of dignity, are regarded as “the Tasked.” Whether such euphemisms for slavery actually existed in the 19th century, they are evocatively deployed in this account of the Underground Railroad and one of its conductors: Hiram Walker, one of the Tasked who’s barely out of his teens when he’s recruited to help guide escapees from bondage in the South to freedom in the North. “Conduction” has more than one meaning for Hiram. It's also the name for a mysterious force that transports certain gifted individuals from one place to another by way of a blue light that lifts and carries them along or across bodies of water. Hiram knows he has this gift after it saves him from drowning in a carriage mishap that kills his master’s oafish son (who’s Hiram’s biological brother). Whatever the source of this power, it galvanizes Hiram to leave behind not only his chains, but also the two Tasked people he loves most: Thena, a truculent older woman who practically raised him as a surrogate mother, and Sophia, a vivacious young friend from childhood whose attempt to accompany Hiram on his escape is thwarted practically at the start when they’re caught and jailed by slave catchers. Hiram directly confronts the most pernicious abuses of slavery before he is once again conducted away from danger and into sanctuary with the Underground, whose members convey him to the freer, if funkier environs of Philadelphia, where he continues to test his power and prepare to return to Virginia to emancipate the women he left behind—and to confront the mysteries of his past. Coates’ imaginative spin on the Underground Railroad’s history is as audacious as Colson Whitehead’s, if less intensely realized. Coates’ narrative flourishes and magic-powered protagonist are reminiscent of his work on Marvel’s Black Panther superhero comic book, but even his most melodramatic effects are deepened by historical facts and contemporary urgency.
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-59059-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | HISTORICAL FICTION | FANTASY | HISTORICAL FANTASY
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