Telisa and Magnus could carry a series with their entertaining if somewhat predictable smuggling adventures.
An otherworld adventure featuring a military brat turned smuggler.
McCloskey (The House of Yeel, 2012, etc) starts with what is hopefully the beginning of a new series featuring xenoarchaeologist Telisa Relachik. After the government detects the heroes upon their arrival on planet T2 in search of ruins, United Nations Space Force officer Joe Hartlet is dispatched toward this abandoned planet. But before Joe can catch up to Telisa and crew—including the handsome enforcer, Magnus—the smugglers find an odd power source accessible through a tunnel. They throw caution to the wind and, like the robotic alien life form in the prologue, take a tumble down the strange rabbit hole. What lies beneath is a constantly shifting landscape that robotic alien Shiny eventually figures out how to maneuver, only after he’s wiped out half of Telisa’s crew, leaving her alone with Magnus for guidance, protection and entertainment. Joe eventually catches up and, together with Shiny, the gang forms an uneasy alliance. It’s shattered, though, once the alien finds the exit from this mysterious hole in the ground. From there, Shiny, Telisa and Magnus escape in a smuggler’s ship—only to be hijacked by Shiny and taken to what the reader is first told is an outpost planet, but later, when Joe and the UNSF arrive, is what seems to be the original hole in the ground. It’s a confusing transition: Are they back in the mysteriously changing environment or on a new planet? Author McCloskey doesn’t make it clear. He excels, however, in bringing up the Neuromancer-inspired implanted chips that enable communication within Telisa’s society. There’s even the brief mention of the need for people to explore a new form of communication: face to face. At one point, Telisa marvels at how quiet life is without her link; she’s not sure how people survived before it. The social statement rightly falls to the wayside in favor of adventure and the questionable motives behind Shiny’s presence. Many questions remain unanswered, however, due to the book’s abrupt ending.
Telisa and Magnus could carry a series with their entertaining if somewhat predictable smuggling adventures.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466393844
Page Count: 308
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.
The fourth and final volume in the Terra Ignota series, a science fantasy set on a 25th-century Earth where people affiliate by philosophy and interest instead of geography.
For the first time in centuries, the world is seized by war—once the combatants actually figure out how to fight one. While rivalries among the Hives provide several motives for conflict, primary among them is whether J.E.D.D. Mason, the heir to various political powers and apparently a god from another universe in human form, should assume absolute rule over the world and transform it for the better. Gathering any large group to further the progress of the war or the possibility for peace is hampered by the loss of the world transit system of flying cars and the global communications network, both shut down by parties unknown, indicating a hidden and dangerous faction manipulating the situation for its own ends. As events play out, they bear a strong resemblance to aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey, suggesting the persistent influence of Bridger, a deceased child who was also probably a god. Is tragedy inevitable, or can the characters defy their apparent fates? This often intriguing but decidedly peculiar chimera of a story seems to have been a philosophical experiment, but it’s difficult to determine just what was being tested. The worldbuilding—part science, part magic—doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny, and the political structure defies comprehension. The global government consists of an oligarchy of people deeply and intimately connected by love and hate on a scale which surpasses the royal dynasties of old, and it includes convicted felons among their number. Perhaps the characters are intended as an outsized satiric comment on the way politicians embrace expediency over morality or personal feelings, but these supposedly morally advanced potentates commit so many perverse atrocities against one another it is difficult to engage with them as people. At times, they seem nearly as alien as J.E.D.D. Mason.
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7806-4
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.
Strange and fascinating alien-contact yarn, the first of a trilogy from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, young physicist Ye Wenjie helplessly watches as fanatical Red Guards beat her father to death. She ends up in a remote re-education (i.e. forced labor) camp not far from an imposing, top secret military installation called Red Coast Base. Eventually, Ye comes to work at Red Coast as a lowly technician, but what really goes on there? Weapons research, certainly, but is it also listening for signals from space—maybe even signaling in return? Another thread picks up the story 40 years later, when nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao and thuggish but perceptive policeman Shi Qiang, summoned by a top-secret international (!) military commission, learn of a war so secret and mysterious that the military officers will give no details. Of more immediate concern is a series of inexplicable deaths, all prominent scientists, including the suicide of Yang Dong, the physicist daughter of Ye Wenjie; the scientists were involved with the shadowy group Frontiers of Science. Wang agrees to join the group and investigate and soon must confront events that seem to defy the laws of physics. He also logs on to a highly sophisticated virtual reality game called “Three Body,” set on a planet whose unpredictable and often deadly environment alternates between Stable times and Chaotic times. And he meets Ye Wenjie, rehabilitated and now a retired professor. Ye begins to tell Wang what happened more than 40 years ago. Jaw-dropping revelations build to a stunning conclusion. In concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu.
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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