Marsh blends superpowers, paramilitary action, and alien machinations to triumphant effect in this follow-up.
In Marsh’s (The Changed, 2013, etc.) sequel, a superpowered contingent hopes to harness alien devices that can tame a plague.
The farming community of Salvation, formerly Pogo Springs, is within the local quarantine zone. The Sickness that killed 80 percent of the area’s population—while granting some of the survivors superpowers—rampages still. Sixteen-year-old Oscar is one of the Changed; specifically, he’s the Messenger—a position that’s vital to humanity’s survival since he’s able to telepathically communicate with helpful aliens. One day, two intruders breach the quarantine: a scientist in a hazmat suit and a soldier who shoots and wounds the scientist before he delivers a mysterious metal case. Oscar, meanwhile, has been in a mental realm that he calls The Nowhere, talking with the alien Teleoinan. He’s learned that the microorganism causing the Sickness, the Manal, is evolving into something even more dangerous. Oscar’s people already possess an orb-shaped piece of alien technology called the Vessel; now they must recover the scepterlike Conductor to, as Teleoinan says, “stop all this from spreading.” However, Teleoinan’s disembodied nemesis, Thevetat, may still be influencing people, as some in Salvation are ready to use violence to force local change. Also, Oscar finds that the dying scientist possesses a photo of his missing father. For this high-stakes sequel, Marsh delivers a sci-fi adventure that keeps characterization and strong emotion in the foreground without sacrificing action. He subtly comments on America’s entrenched partisan politics with the verbal sparring and division in Salvation; in one scene, Oscar’s friend Roxy tells a manipulative blowhard: “It’s not about being right. It’s about keeping people safe.” Although the violence is brutal—often echoing real-life terrorism—Marsh keeps things light and nerdy with references to Captain Planet and the Planeteers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Clever new members of the Changed tribe include a humanoid dog named Donald and Zelda, who can absorb and retain information from printed content (such as an encyclopedia) through her hands. Even as certain mysteries are explained, a fiendishly bold cliffhanger ensures that fans will return for the next volume.
Marsh blends superpowers, paramilitary action, and alien machinations to triumphant effect in this follow-up.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5472-3278-9
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning.
An intrepid teen encounters the dark secrets of the elite in her climate-ravaged world in this translated work from South Korea.
Sixteen-year-old Jeon Chobahm is shocked to learn that Goh Haeri, the beloved reality TV star who happens to be Chobahm’s look-alike, just died by suicide—and also that she’s being asked to become Haeri’s secret replacement. In their frozen, post-apocalyptic world, Chobahm, like everyone around her, leads a bleak life. She bundles up daily against the dangerous cold and toils in a power plant. But now she’ll live Haeri’s cushy life in Snowglobe, an exclusive, glass-dome-enclosed community, where the climate is mild, and the resident actors’ lives are broadcast as entertainment for those in the open world. As glamorous as life there may seem, however, Chobahm quickly learns that there’s a sinister underbelly: People are killed off when they’re no longer useful, and there’s something strange about Haeri’s family dynamics. As she meets a host of new companions, including Yi Bonwhe, the heir of Snowglobe’s founding family, Chobahm discovers a devastating secret and embarks on a risky plan to expose the truth. Climate change, societal inequity, and the ethics of escaping from our own lives by watching others’ are addressed in this intelligent, absorbing book. Chobahm is a complex character inhabiting a strongly developed world, and her compassion, ambition, outrage, and sorrow ring true.
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning. (Dystopian. 12-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593484975
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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