A highly recommended, character-driven sci-fi novel in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein.
In Siemsen’s (The Opal, 2013, etc.) sci-fi novel, scientists embark on a long-distance, one-way voyage—and encounter disaster.
Minerva “Minnie” Sotiras is one of a small group of Earth scientists who’ve devoted their lives to studying the indigenous inhabitants of the planet Epsilon C from the orbital safety of their spaceship. The aliens have formed two polarized civilizations: the Hynka, a brutal, warlike people who live on one side of the planet, and the Threck (Minnie’s specialty), a peaceful, advanced people who live on the other half. Siemsen skillfully sketches in the basic interpersonal dynamics between Minnie and her shipmates, and then kicks off the main plot: a catastrophe renders the ship uninhabitable and sends its occupants fleeing into space in escape pods. As ill luck would have it, the pod containing Minnie and the ship’s captain lands in Hynka territory, and the story rapidly and expertly unfolds into a classic tale of alien survival and adaptation. Siemsen does a seamless job of blending the tech-speak of hard sci-fi and the exotica of alien worlds; the story’s technology is internally consistent and very well-explained, and the bizarre, terrifying animal life-forms of Epsilon C are vividly realized. Best of all, his well-drawn characters are emotionally resonant. Minnie, in particular, is a heroine to root for; she constantly strives to overcome not only the limitations of salvaged equipment, but also her own preconceptions about her colleagues and the natives of Epsilon C. The author has carefully worked out every detail of his story, and manages to infuse a genuine sense of urgency and humanity into a basic, clichéd plot. The action alternates steadily, building to a series of climaxes that, although predictable, are tense and satisfying; the tale also has an appealing sarcastic undertone. Readers of last year’s surprise sci-fi hit, Andy Weir’s The Martian, will find the same great blend of technology and storytelling here.
A highly recommended, character-driven sci-fi novel in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1940757230
Page Count: 438
Publisher: Fantome, Incorporated
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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