A thoughtful and eventful sci-fi mystery that satisfies.
In this novel, a group of astronauts explores a faraway planet for colonization, but discovers it already has some inhabitants.
After the last Great War in 2054, the worldwide population was reduced to less than 100,000. By 2072, Earth is a wasteland that can no longer feed its people. Only finding a suitable exoplanet can save humans now, so the Order of World Leaders mounts an expedition to Arianrhod in the Triangulum Galaxy to see whether it can sustain life. The crew consists of three women, Xi, Rho, and Zeta—the narrator—and three men, Sigma, Omega, and Chi, all young scientists (their Greek letter tags are adopted for the operation). Their leader is Capt. Ralph Reynard, “a retired former United States Marine from back when the United States still existed.” It’s a dangerous mission uncertain of success, but if they triumph, the seven will earn early retirement and lifelong prosperity. But not long after their arrival, the undertaking goes haywire: Reynard acts suspiciously and a scientist disappears. Searching for the lost Sigma, Zeta discovers what seems to be an alien species—but they speak Russian. With everything at stake not just for themselves but for Earth, the team members make some desperate choices. Goodison (Limboland, 2016, etc.) entertainingly blends the sci-fi and mystery genres here; though Sigma’s death is made clear before long, other puzzles arise to be solved. Complicated strands in the plot include the early space race, the environment, and class/power struggles; these issues add thoughtfulness to the book’s exciting action scenes. Goodison keeps readers guessing about Reynard, OWL, their real motives, and how this can all possibly work out until the final pages. Although the Greek letter tags make it a little difficult to keep everyone straight at first, Goodison’s characterization is well drawn, and Zeta becomes an admirable heroine, a tough, smart cookie with a good moral center. This future world is usually presented with plausible changes, but to quibble, it’s annoying when years and months are renamed—for no discernible reason—“rotations” and “moons,” while days are still “days.”
A thoughtful and eventful sci-fi mystery that satisfies.Pub Date: May 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-945136-19-1
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Sheffield Publications
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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