Inventive, intelligent sci-fi about humans grappling with an oceanic world.
In this debut novel, a Postbox transports future government auditor Sero Novak to a colony on a water planet.
With a duplicate body printed for him by a Postbox and his mind uploaded into his newly made brain, Novak is mentally connected with the rest of the Race—humanity—by a NeuroVision memory linkup. His vital mission is to learn what has happened to the colonists on the water planet NineDee and how their efforts to tame the primitive ocean-bound world have progressed. As Novak explores NineDee and gets to know the people who live there, he encounters the dangers of the indigenous life forms and the environment—and uncovers weirder and weirder secrets about the colonists themselves, culminating in a terrible revelation that forces him to take desperate action. With humans having survived an economic apocalypse to rebuild a better society, but one still with deep-rooted dissension and selfishness, will they carry their petty desires and desperate wishes across the galaxy? And will Novak be able to act in the best interests of all of humanity in the face of his own slipping ideals as well as the destructive passions of the people sent to build their outposts among the distant stars? Tyson makes ambitious choices and trusts the reader to be smart enough to follow his narrative. While the characters are human and three-dimensional and the dialogue clean but slightly didactic, the pace is measured and the setting descriptions are complex and challenging. Little effort is made to clarify terms and ideas as they are first presented, and readers must infer and learn as they progress. Luckily, the demands made on readers are well-rewarded. But given the dense approach to worldbuilding in the novel, it is difficult to know if the author’s lapses into contemporary diction and behavior are virtues or flaws (“She says she feels the same about me. You’ll see, Minnus. We just…pop!”). Other contemporary pop-culture references (“frak,” “Gigantor,” etc.) are jarring and have less potential defense.
Inventive, intelligent sci-fi about humans grappling with an oceanic world.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5351-6397-2
Page Count: 524
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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