A frisky, if somewhat convoluted, SF satire with some Shakespearean knavery.
In Smith’s SF series installment, an interplanetary actor/singer/rogue faces warlike cephalopod aliens using faster-than-light technology.
This series relates the zesty, comedic, and rather torturously plotted capers of Jack Jones, a crewman aboard the starship Shakespeare. The crew poses as Earth’s cultural ambassadors, performing human music and classic plays for various alien species, but in reality, they’re spies/troubleshooters looking out for humankind’s interests. Jack and the Shakespeare team were slow to realize that their faster-than-light drives are part of a fiendish plot by their inventors, the octopuslike Quihiri. After an “upgrade” issued from the Quihiri homeworld, the drives begin to fail, leaving many alien civilizations suddenly helpless before xenophobic Quihiri armies. The opening plunks the reader right down in the middle of all this, and over the course of the book, Jack tries to unite with Earth’s forces and share intel to thwart the villains without being separated from his Shakespeare friends in the fog of combat. His new compatriots—including Max, a superintelligent talking dog—are less than open-minded about Jack’s occasional Quihiri allies and unconventional methods. Readers unfamiliar with this complicated series should know that Jack is a young clone of the lawless original Jack (“Old-Jack”), who languishes in jail; the clone inherited Old-Jack’s cover job and his ship-captain romantic partner, Gina. A semi-endearing facet of the material is that the new Jack is truly a lover, not a fighter, who tries to solve things with kisses rather than gunfire. Early on, Jack meets Jax Jones, who looks and acts exactly like him—which oddly isn’t fully addressed until the closing pages. There are numerous quotes from Shakespeare as well as a famous Star Wars line and Cats lyrics. The author is a physicist at the University of Colorado, and she ably uses her expertise to spike her fiction with quantum theory. In a brief afterword, she also acknowledges her debt to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy cycle, which readers will notice—especially in the detail of improbability-powered star travel. Jack’s larkish antics may also captivate fans of Harry Harrison’s classic Bill the Galactic Hero series.
A frisky, if somewhat convoluted, SF satire with some Shakespearean knavery.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-950198-25-2
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Quarky Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.
This debut novel, the first of a projected trilogy, blends science fiction, fantasy, gothic chiller, and classic house-party mystery.
Gideon Nav, a foundling of mysterious antecedents, was not so much adopted as indentured by the Ninth House, a nearly extinct noble necromantic house. Trained to fight, she wants nothing more than to leave the place where everyone despises her and join the Cohort, the imperial military. But after her most recent escape attempt fails, she finally gets the opportunity to depart the planet. The heir and secret ruler of the Ninth House, the ruthless and prodigiously talented bone adept Harrowhark Nonagesimus, chooses Gideon to serve her as cavalier primary, a sworn bodyguard and aide de camp, when the undying Emperor summons Harrow to compete for a position as a Lyctor, an elite, near-immortal adviser. The decaying Canaan House on the planet of the absent Emperor holds dark secrets and deadly puzzles as well as a cheerfully enigmatic priest who provides only scant details about the nature of the competition...and at least one person dedicated to brutally slaughtering the competitors. Unsure of how to mix with the necromancers and cavaliers from the other Houses, Gideon must decide whom among them she can trust—and her doubts include her own necromancer, Harrow, whom she’s loathed since childhood. This intriguing genre stew works surprisingly well. The limited locations and narrow focus mean that the author doesn’t really have to explain how people not directly attached to a necromantic House or the military actually conduct daily life in the Empire; hopefully future installments will open up the author’s creative universe a bit more. The most interesting aspect of the novel turns out to be the prickly but intimate relationship between Gideon and Harrow, bound together by what appears at first to be simple hatred. But the challenges of Canaan House expose other layers, beginning with a peculiar but compelling mutual loyalty and continuing on to other, more complex feelings, ties, and shared fraught experiences.
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31319-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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