Ray Sky, a superpowered mutant in the 23rd century, travels through time and space to try to subvert an alien contest over the destiny of humanity.
Sales’ (Jump Reactor, Book One, 2015) absurdist sci-fi, the second in a series, proceeds in its tangled plot with a strange sort of lucid dream–logic and a deadpan treatment of ludicrous events. In the year 2250, Raymond Thadius Sky is a “quad core mutant” descended from Atlanteans, with titanium-reinforced bones, a turtlelike droid companion on his back, and the equivalent of nuclear fusion reactors in his body. He is also a “jump reactor,” one of several chosen by aliens to accelerate humanity’s development into a peaceful, responsible civilization. The scheme—carried out for millennia under the guise of computer-generated angels, spirit possession, and messiahs—is being directed by the extraterrestrial reptilian race called the Hoodia. When Ray realizes it’s all part of a gigantic bet the Hoodia have placed with the Interstellar Gambling Commission, he loses confidence in their good intentions and sets out to loosen their meddling grip on mankind’s destiny. To further this goal, Ray partners with Scalps and Skeletons—an elite secret society with a religious-based master plan to repopulate the Earth with dangerous wildlife that will prey on interloping ETs—as well as above-classified government agency Ultra. Much of the antics, including Ray’s delving into the past of a Rat Pack–esque bunch of roguish entertainers called the Snake Squad, seem like recruiting/hazing rituals rather pointlessly indulged by these shadowy cabals. Finally, Ray voyages through a stargate to the 1980s to harvest hundreds of ferocious grizzly bears and wolves to fight for the future, also uniting several space-going races in battles against compromised solar system installations. He likewise tries to rescue his girlfriend from pseudo-angel captivity. It’s as busy as an out-of-control pinball machine, and after all the wild detours and ricochets, the ending has Ray seemingly reconsidering his mission. There is ample evidence, however, that his weird adventure has not at all ended.
A crazy, careening space-time adventure that’s far from formulaic.
Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942995-05-0
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Trippy Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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