A fast-paced thriller featuring exotic locales and an intriguing cast of characters.
A woman searches for her missing lover on the French Riviera as the world teeters on the brink of chaos in Roen’s (Maya Rising, 2015, etc.) near-future thriller.
Maya Jade, an American residing in the south of France, lives in dangerous times. The year is 2018, and the world as she knows it is quickly disintegrating due to ecological disasters and widespread political corruption. She’s built a successful career and enjoyed glamorous parties among the European jet set, but those days are almost over as the Russian Mafia solidifies its power over Monaco and the French Riviera. When her sister, Leah, invites her to return to the United States and seek safety at the family compound in Oregon, Maya is tempted—but first she must tend to some unfinished business. She had a falling-out with her doctor lover, Julian, but a psychic has predicted that he’ll come back, raising Maya’s hopes for a reunion. Enlisting the help of longtime friend Giovanni, she searches for her lost love throughout the area. Along the way, she uncovers a human-trafficking ring and meets Abdul, a powerful man whose seductive charms may be irresistible. Roen creates an arresting pastiche of apocalyptic fiction and erotic romance that’s anchored by a strong heroine. Its depiction of a futuristic Côte d’Azur on the brink of anarchy is particularly striking; even as questions swirl about a possible Russian takeover, the wealthy continue to party and gamble all night in decadent nightclubs and casinos. Roen also paints a vivid picture of what’s taking place in a future America via the emails that Maya receives. Maya herself is an intriguing, resourceful heroine whose compassionate nature is complemented by Julian’s. Her journals serve as a frame for the story—a clever device that brings a sense of immediacy to her predicament while also allowing for solid character development.
A fast-paced thriller featuring exotic locales and an intriguing cast of characters.Pub Date: April 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4801-2532-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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