A diverting spacefaring tale and an intriguing examination of humankind.
Genetically modified humans discover what life can be like without modification in Lemmert’s debut SF novel.
After a horrible nightmare, Aurora awakens to an alert that all staff on the New Horizon spaceship need to report for an announcement. The ship has been hit by an asteroid, which perforated the hull. Fortunately, there were no casualties, but the ship needs to be repaired, and the Sol system is the nearest and best place to do so. Aurora is intrigued by the prospect of traveling to the Sol system, as that’s where the original, non–genetically modified humans still reside—specifically on Sol-3, aka Earth. Aurora is part of a group called the Sisterhood, and the result of thousands of years of genetic modification. Earth scientist Nicolas Munyakazi hears about the landing of the Sisterhood’s ship on the moon and figures that it’s his chance to show that his work, which includes an animal sanctuary on Earth, is “more critical to the general good than the Sisterhood’s mining rights to the land underneath it,” which he’s afraid they’ll invoke now that they’ve returned. The Sisterhood may have helped Earth from being fully destroyed by the Secular Global Warming Disaster more than 1,000 years ago, but they’ve never truly seen what Nicolas’ sanctuary is like and how beneficial it could be for people everywhere. Aurora’s scientific nature also makes her curious to study unaltered humans. Over the course of this novel, Lemmert explores deep questions about what it really means to be human and even regarding the meaning of life itself. Readers may find that some story elements unnecessarily sidetrack the main plot and slow the story down, such as Aurora’s shopping trip on the moon. However, they often help to make clear the sense of otherness that the Sisterhood have in relation to Earth humans. Overall, despite the often serious subject matter, the work maintains a brisk pace, and the scientific elements will be particularly entertaining to fans of hard SF.
A diverting spacefaring tale and an intriguing examination of humankind.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-87381-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Lothar Tremmel
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning.
An intrepid teen encounters the dark secrets of the elite in her climate-ravaged world in this translated work from South Korea.
Sixteen-year-old Jeon Chobahm is shocked to learn that Goh Haeri, the beloved reality TV star who happens to be Chobahm’s look-alike, just died by suicide—and also that she’s being asked to become Haeri’s secret replacement. In their frozen, post-apocalyptic world, Chobahm, like everyone around her, leads a bleak life. She bundles up daily against the dangerous cold and toils in a power plant. But now she’ll live Haeri’s cushy life in Snowglobe, an exclusive, glass-dome-enclosed community, where the climate is mild, and the resident actors’ lives are broadcast as entertainment for those in the open world. As glamorous as life there may seem, however, Chobahm quickly learns that there’s a sinister underbelly: People are killed off when they’re no longer useful, and there’s something strange about Haeri’s family dynamics. As she meets a host of new companions, including Yi Bonwhe, the heir of Snowglobe’s founding family, Chobahm discovers a devastating secret and embarks on a risky plan to expose the truth. Climate change, societal inequity, and the ethics of escaping from our own lives by watching others’ are addressed in this intelligent, absorbing book. Chobahm is a complex character inhabiting a strongly developed world, and her compassion, ambition, outrage, and sorrow ring true.
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning. (Dystopian. 12-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593484975
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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