A charming but sometimes confusing story that finds its feet when focused on its furry protagonist.
In Seyer’s SF novel, a mischievous corgi living in the not-too-distant future is set on having adventures beyond his sheltered existence.
It is 2051 in Toronto, Canada, and Bali—a 7-month-old, unusually-colored Cardigan Welsh Corgi—is bored (“As he gazed out beyond the confines of his backyard, he could see an entirely new world waiting to be explored—the winding streets of the neighborhood, filled with bikes and children playing under the shining sun”). His owners, doctors Manuel and Tatiana Hashbun, are busy, wealthy professionals with demanding jobs who pay little attention to their gifted dog. Bali’s series of adventures begins as he repeatedly escapes from home—these jaunts will take him to New York City and back, all around his upper-middle-class neighborhood, and even to Seoul, South Korea—via time travel—where he guest stars in Kisses and Tears, a popular melodrama. While Bali’s chief concerns involve pesky squirrels, rabbits, and life beyond the backyard, temperatures are rising and technological advances have led to a surveillance network that extends from ring doorbells to cities that run on “android-controlled transportation.” This is something that thieves Ben and Renato try to evade as they move between New York and Toronto to steal as much as possible, but they fail to anticipate an encounter with Bali. Another plot thread introduces Dr. Motuo Locus, of Locus Enterprise, LLC, who is enmeshed in a bitter rivalry with Dr. David Wojcik to develop the ability to “transfer or teleport disintegrated sub-nanoparticles to a predetermined coordinate,” allowing objects to time-travel.
Bali is a compelling and mischievous protagonist when the narrative is focused on his role in the adventures, albeit one who is easily distracted: “He forgot about his escape plans temporarily—at least for today—since he wanted to play with his old friend a little.” But the surrounding misadventures of his family, the thieves, and the scientists, which take up a significant part of the book, result in Bali’s care-free attitude and whimsy becoming lost in the muddle of his human co-stars’ tangled lives. Initially, the Hashbuns take expensive measures to train Bali and prevent any further escapes, but they seldom engage with the dog when he is home with them: “Not for nothing, Bali has been feeling lonely lately. No one was giving him real attention.” This is contrasted with Tatiana’s desire for companionship in the chapter “Seven-and-a-Half-Months Earlier,” in which the portrait of Hashbun family life is developed ahead of Bali’s adoption. Their relationships unfold alongside the severe impacts of the erratic weather and climate change on society as an “Enhanced Fujita (EF) 4.5 magnitude tornado” tears through Toronto; on the day of Bali’s adoption, “twenty-seven inmates had been hospitalized because of the intense summer heat.” The inclusion of these details (and the mentions of omnipresent surveillance) can be disorienting, as these issues aren’t reflected on by the characters; as they move through their days, the Hashbuns’ wealth insulates them from any real stakes. Reyes-Mariano’s AI-assisted digital illustrations set off each chapter, adding color and liveliness to the text.
A charming but sometimes confusing story that finds its feet when focused on its furry protagonist.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9798339977100
Page Count: 233
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.
The first installment of Liu’s Julia Z saga is an SF thriller set in a near-future “post-truth age” where the use of AI and the inundation of digital disinformation and data pollution have blurred the lines between delusion and reality.
Julia—whose immigrant mother, a divisive political activist, was murdered during a border protest—has lived on her own since she was 14. A brilliant hacker now 23, she’s been trying to live in online anonymity, acutely aware of the multitude of ways she can be identified and tracked. Living in a Boston suburb and struggling to make ends meet, she inadvertently becomes entangled with a lawyer named Piers Neri and his search for his artist wife, Elli Krantz—famous for her experimental work in vivid dreaming—who may or may not have been kidnapped. A prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, Piers goes on the run with the help of Julia—and together, they begin putting together pieces of a mind-bogglingly intricate puzzle that links Elli to a powerful criminal with a global reach. As Julia digs deeper into the appeal of vivid dreaming and the criminal’s ruthless endeavors, she discovers the sham that is the American Dream: “America was corrupt and steeped in sin. The powerful had rigged the game for themselves and turned the country into a panopticon to imprison the rest of us. Anytime one of the powerless—it didn’t matter the color of your skin, the language you spoke, the place you were born in—was on the verge of climbing out, they would be ruthlessly tossed back into the pit.” And amid the backdrop of dealing with unresolved childhood trauma and the need to find her place in the world, she finds something unexpected—herself.
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668083178
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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