A lively rumpus-room of mythology-tinged high-fantasy SF adventure.
Awaiting coronation as the long-lost, mighty king of the Milky Way, human youth Richard must dodge threats from deadly space enemies in Hickman’s sequel.
The title refers to a seemingly average teenager who carries the singular and irreproducible DNA of the spacegoing Plantagenet family, a humanoid alien dynasty who ruled and defended the many planets of the Milky Way galaxy more than 1,000 years ago. Back then, a usurper within the royal house murdered noble King Dolloff and his brethren before being assassinated himself. One survivor, the prince’s pregnant fiancee, found sanctuary on remote Earth—a “barbaric” place of dread and exile in galactic culture whose very existence is often doubted except as fearful folklore. Centuries later, in the present, Ohioan Richard is contacted by scattered supporters—including a resourceful and ever loyal Artificial Alien Life dubbed AAL, who enlightened the lad to his incredible bloodline. On the planet Krel, Richard was revealed as heir to the throne prematurely, and AAL had to place a duplicate with the lad’s oblivious family back in Ohio. The real Richard, in the galactic capital city before his coronation, must be a quick study in etiquette, diplomacy, policy, and virtual messiah-hood for billions of worshipful subjects. There are also enemies, such as the influential family of Sen. Spartacus, who want the youth killed to allow an elected democracy (in other words, Spartacus) to take control. Preparing novice Richard for his challenges includes granting superior abilities (such as teleportation) via accelerated evolution using the energy of a mystic black hole. However, these newfound superpowers are often beyond Richard’s control. Another unforeseen complication: the boy-king finding true love and passionate sex with Amber, a humanoid fox-creature from a planet called Beowulf, in a galactic culture that often marginalizes nonhuman creatures.
Hickman continues a multivolume saga that was launched with Richard: Distant Son (2022). Over the course of this novel, the author’s wide-ranging cosmology scrambles together elements of SF, high fantasy, and fairy tales; key alien species in the ensemble include such creatures as centaurs, satyrs, dragons, and winged horses. As noted above, readers should be prepared for xenosexual consensual relations as well as the fact that in addition to a healthy libido, Richard has an unusually active bladder for an SF adventurer; multiple scenes take place in his “privy” (a royal one, of course, that is guarded by a powerful AI). However, space-vulpine dating and mating tips and bathroom emergencies are only parts of the narrative, which never sits still. Amber’s single mother, Kit, happens to be a top reporter for the Galactic News Network, or GNN (not Fox News; the overall tone is not as satirical as that in a Terry Pratchett, Robert Asprin, or Jody Lynn Nye mock-epic). Assassination plots and lethal traps, grievous wounds, spaceship battles, heartache, tragedy, and miraculous resurrections comprise briskly paced episodes that alternate with scatological comedy, door-slamming farce, and demonstrations of Richard’s inherent kindness and nobility. The dialogue ranges from passably profound pronouncements to comic-book melodrama (“The beast let out an earth-shattering laugh. ‘Puny part-human, how dare you defy me’ ”).
A lively rumpus-room of mythology-tinged high-fantasy SF adventure.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985477726
Page Count: 366
Publisher: RedFoxOnHigh
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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