A provocative and philosophical exploration of humanity in a fragile future affected by heavy history.
In Mahyar and Mahbod Amouzegar’s SF novel, podmates from a utopian colony search for answers about a missing pod member who questioned their society.
The year is 2178. Elysium is a harmonious society in which everybody looks the same, with “brown eyes, brown hair, and a similar build,” despite being born in different pods at the hatchery. The inhabitants’ food is synthesized, libido has been eliminated, and emotions are regulated. Each person has a “faint blue light” in their wrist connecting them to a “Direct Data Transfer system” and the “Information Visualization System.” After growing up on the Farm with thousands of other children in pods, Dolores and her “podies” are one year away from adulthood. They live independently and take higher education classes aligned with a chosen profession. On their 25th birthday, the members of Pod-081053-05 meet and painfully reminisce about their lost brother, Darius. The reason for Darius’ disappearance hinges on “his high probability of aberration from the start,” which, in addition to a minor aesthetic point of differentiation, appears to be ideological in nature. When Destiny, his close friend from another pod, returns to Dolores’ and fellow podmate Demi’s lives, she reveals that Darius was questioning Elysium before his disappearance. Wondering why the Elysium residents “walk blindly into fates [Darius] could never understand,” the trio begin to follow his trail beyond the wall that surrounds Elysium and make shocking discoveries about the utopia’s origins. The Amouzegar brothers have created compelling societies in Elysium and the Walled City, paying careful attention to interpersonal relationships. The exploratory journey that Dolores, Demi, and Destiny take to test the boundaries of Elysium is engaging and unites the major plot strands neatly. Many philosophical questions are raised—including the ethics of android servitude—but the troubling issue of eugenics in Elysium is overlooked in favor of other quandaries.
A provocative and philosophical exploration of humanity in a fragile future affected by heavy history.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781608013043
Page Count: 425
Publisher: Univ. of New Orleans Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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