A richly imagined but grandiose and overstuffed fantasia.
In Gould’s SF fantasy, angels and demons do battle from the creation of Earth to the spacefaring future.
This epic plays out in two plotlines over thousands of years and several star systems. One centers on the prison ship Harvester, whose brutally exploited convicts and androids are forced to mine the planet Dudael hundreds of years from now. Falsely convicted science whiz Vincent Riorden gets plucked out of the inmate pool by Capt. Morigan to investigate a magnetic anomaly—a promotion that requires him to get neural implants that connect him to a hive mind run by the ship’s computer. Vincent’s storyline is slow to get going, and much of it is spent introducing the intricate, often fascinating technology of landing craft; robotic flesh looms that weave whole bodies; and grisly cyborg prostheses. However, it finally takes the character to a door in a Dudael tunnel that could lead to a mysterious alien presence. Alternating with this gritty space-dystopia narrative is the celestial melodrama of Azazel, an angel charged by Yahweh with protecting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Much cosmic mayhem ensues; Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit amid a pitched battle between armies of angels and demons as curlicued trash-talk resounds: “Answer me, Lance of Uriel! Do you truly not fear me?” Azazel confronts such hellish monstrosities as Abaddon, a cross between a crab, a hydra, and an annoying child. As years pass, Azazel gets to know Adam’s son Cain as well as fallen angel Lucifer, both sympathetic figures. However, he’s demoralized by Abel’s death, the Great Flood, and other biblical catastrophes, and he starts blaming Yahweh for them. He eventually suffers a nervous breakdown, and the fallout from it brings both him and Lucifer aboard Harvester.
Gould’s yarn feels a bit like a mashup of Paradise Lost, a Transformers movie, and Blade Runner. His prose is distinctly Miltonian in its gorgeously poetic passages—“Beyond the spears of light there was only the ink of space, black and reaching as far as the eye could see, marred only occasionally with wisps of star-bearing mist.” However, it also displays Milton’s Latinate verbosity. For example, where other authors might have a character say, “Nah, just a hunch,” Gould has him say, “Nah. Just a hypothesis of my own construction that I’ve yet to share with anyone.” The bloody action scenes have a hallucinatory dazzle (“Flesh and tendon parted in lashing whips of gore, leaving severed faces to fall to the dirt and leer into the scarred sky”), but the book often bogs down in morose rumination on the problem of why Yahweh condones evil. The chatty but evasive Yahweh never answers that oft-posed question, and indeed, the heavenly presences here are an unimpressive lot—either callous and hypocritical or, like Azazel, confused and depressed. Lucifer, fortunately, steals the show with his gleeful, charismatic malice. Overall, Gould’s SF futurism is atmospheric and engrossing, but it’s marred by an ungainly supernatural narrative with too much pointless theologizing.
A richly imagined but grandiose and overstuffed fantasia.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-929945-03-0
Page Count: 497
Publisher: Leighton House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Absolutely superb.
Leaders of Britain’s abolitionist movement join forces with a veteran of the Haitian revolution to push back Napoleon’s deadly forces in Parry’s second Shadow Histories novel.
Napoléon Bonaparte isn’t a particularly talented magician, but his potential as a general and conqueror attracts the attention of the same mysterious figure who manipulated Robespierre to set off the Reign of Terror in A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (2020). When Bonaparte summons a kraken to serve the French navy and later finds a dragon hidden in the sands of Egypt, it’s only a matter of time before France and Europe fall at his feet. William Pitt, meanwhile, is growing weaker by the day as he works to keep a deadly and dangerous magical secret from his enemies. William Wilberforce continues to fight for abolition but is stymied at every turn. Fina uses her magic to help Toussaint Louverture keep hold of Saint-Domingue, but she eventually makes the journey to London and meets Pitt and Wilberforce. With a first-rate blend of political drama and magic battle–action, Parry manages to inject tension and stakes into a historical drama where average readers will know at least the broad strokes of the ending. Effortlessly switching from France to England to Egypt to Saint-Domingue, Parry folds in show-stopping new characters like Kate Dove, a commoner weather mage dead-set on avenging her brother’s death by kraken, and Lady Hester Stanhope, who would become one of the most famous explorers of the 19th century. When the three main characters, Fina, Pitt, and Wilberforce, finally face off with the stranger, the resulting conflict brings the series’ meditations on idealism, the fight for human rights, and the necessary limits of institutional power to a head.
Absolutely superb.Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-45915-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dark and devastating conclusion that transcends its roots in historical fact to examine brutal truths.
In the final installment of the Poppy War trilogy, a warrior shaman resolves to seize control of her homeland from enemies far and near, no matter the cost.
Having suffered severe losses and betrayals, Rin rallies the Southern Coalition in an effort to defeat the Mugenese troops still in Nikan, the president of the Nikara Republic, and the foreign menace of the Hesperians, with their almost unimaginably advanced technology. But a southern army is not enough, and Rin must also rely on the unpredictable powers of her wild god, the Phoenix, and form a risky alliance with the Trifecta that once ruled Nikan. Drawing heavily on 20th-century Chinese history, Kuang continues to explore familiar themes—including imperialism, racism, colorism, and the terrible and long-lasting effects of war—while deepening Rin’s portrayal, as Rin experiences moments of heartfelt sympathy and connection with others while also continually seeking power and succumbing over and over to her own hubris and paranoia. This installment dwells heavily on the devastating realities of war and the costs of leading a nation in crisis but does not sink into overly grotesque meditations—or perhaps we, along with Rin, have become desensitized and hardened. Ultimately, despite the epic scope of the plot, the novel hinges on the relationships between Rin and those closest to her: A nation may rise or fall and thousands may lose their homes or starve in the process, but their fate depends not on magic from the divine plane but on simple, fallible people.
A dark and devastating conclusion that transcends its roots in historical fact to examine brutal truths. (Map, Dramatis Personae)Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-266262-0
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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