A gentle story of hope and family connection.
In Mawhiney’s SF debut, an Earth on the road to ecological recovery relies on the burgeoning powers of a teenage girl.
Fifty years into the future, Earth has been pulled back from the brink of ecological disaster. This is largely thanks to the Earth Project (a reclamation initiative using advanced technology) and inclusive but ruralizing post-plague societal reforms. This new way of life is exemplified in Land of Hope, a four-generational farmstead that began as a pilot project and has become the epicenter of change. Fifteen-year-old Fania and her 12-year-old sister, Nuna, are the youngest members of a matriarchal family headed by their great-grandmother Alicia, who, along with her husband, Nide, initiated the Earth Project. Fania has just returned from her Immersion—two years of isolated study during which 13-year-olds hone their aptitudes and determine their strengths. Unlike her peers (and Nuna, who exhibits a prodigious musical talent), Fania doesn’t know what her contribution will be. Her potential is too great to pin down. She is apprenticed to Alicia to learn more about her family history…and the dark secrets that underlie the Earth Project. Will Fania come to heal the past and safeguard the future? Mawhiney employs an omniscient narrative viewpoint across four generations of characters. These initially prove difficult to distinguish from one another, and some of the shifts occur with little indication. Nonetheless, distinct personalities emerge—most obviously in Fania, Nuna, and Alicia but also, more subtly, in the rest of the family. While not without foibles, the characters are all uniformly good, perhaps to a fault, and also gifted in some way. The lack of traditional antagonist or crisis, however, lends a bleak mood to the novel’s more challenging, dystopian elements. Rather than focus on conflict, though, the plot and pacing reflect Fania’s personal growth and, by extension, that of her community and the planet more broadly. The result is a positive, optimistic depiction of the future, albeit one that relies on metaphysical as much as societal change.
A gentle story of hope and family connection.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-03-910967-4
Page Count: 285
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.
The fourth and final volume in the Terra Ignota series, a science fantasy set on a 25th-century Earth where people affiliate by philosophy and interest instead of geography.
For the first time in centuries, the world is seized by war—once the combatants actually figure out how to fight one. While rivalries among the Hives provide several motives for conflict, primary among them is whether J.E.D.D. Mason, the heir to various political powers and apparently a god from another universe in human form, should assume absolute rule over the world and transform it for the better. Gathering any large group to further the progress of the war or the possibility for peace is hampered by the loss of the world transit system of flying cars and the global communications network, both shut down by parties unknown, indicating a hidden and dangerous faction manipulating the situation for its own ends. As events play out, they bear a strong resemblance to aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey, suggesting the persistent influence of Bridger, a deceased child who was also probably a god. Is tragedy inevitable, or can the characters defy their apparent fates? This often intriguing but decidedly peculiar chimera of a story seems to have been a philosophical experiment, but it’s difficult to determine just what was being tested. The worldbuilding—part science, part magic—doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny, and the political structure defies comprehension. The global government consists of an oligarchy of people deeply and intimately connected by love and hate on a scale which surpasses the royal dynasties of old, and it includes convicted felons among their number. Perhaps the characters are intended as an outsized satiric comment on the way politicians embrace expediency over morality or personal feelings, but these supposedly morally advanced potentates commit so many perverse atrocities against one another it is difficult to engage with them as people. At times, they seem nearly as alien as J.E.D.D. Mason.
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7806-4
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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