A semi-Arthurian SF swashbuckler that swaps future tech for Merlin wizardry.
A novel in which a nanotechnology-infused, militaristic race attempts to conquer humans.
MacDonald’s SF novel takes place in a vaguely described world (whether it’s Earth is uncertain). Following a sort of global war, humanity has divided into two competing factions. Nanotechnology infusions that were intended as a benevolent upgrade in evolution and survival created the “Unity,” a formidable group for whom the microscopic robots in their blood confer superior speed, acuity, and rapid healing—all of which are assets on the battlefield. The nanites also dampen emotions, and the resulting robotlike conformity has made the Unity a conquest-oriented empire, seizing and assimilating non-nano-humanity’s city-states one by one. Timothy Arin, who now goes only by Arin, is a high-echelon Unity military officer, overseeing the absorption of yet another settlement of unconverted people. An assassin strikes down top Unity occupiers, and Arin recognizes the sniper as Lianna “Lia” McMillan—his childhood sweetheart and first love from the pre-Unity era. Now she’s a leading figure in the resistance. He pursues and captures the resourceful, fierce Lia but can’t bring himself to kill her or turn her over to the rest of Unity. Because the others in his collective will be able to read his memories and uncover the disobedience, Arin has no choice but to immediately go back with Lia to her rebel headquarters beyond the “badlands.” But she has a new relationship (with resistance leader Roland), and earning trust with Lia’s people is complicated by the impossible love triangle developing among the three. Nitpicky readers may wish for greater background on this feudal/medieval/futuristic dystopian culture (“The surprise appearance of the resistance soldiers on motorcycles had delivered its order, corralling all the battling bodies together like livestock to slaughter. Roland swiftly closed in on the fighting and pulled out his sword”). MacDonald’s decision to pare things down to the basics, however, creates an agreeably lean narrative. Though a plot outline might sound like one of the Borg storylines from the Star Trek universe, the novel actually leans closer toward the Camelot legend than Gene Roddenberry.
A semi-Arthurian SF swashbuckler that swaps future tech for Merlin wizardry.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781633738560
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Dragonbrae
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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