Sharp characterization boosts this leisurely paced but engrossing SF series opener.
In this debut SF novel, an Egyptian artifact propels a ninth-century alchemist to a strange, futuristic planet.
In 832, Al-Khidr guides an exploration team through a pyramid in Giza, Egypt. The Iraqi alchemist leads the visitors to valuables that they collect for an Islamic ruler. But Al-Khidr is more interested in such discoveries as oddly malleable glass and metals that have apparently never rusted. While trying to identify a metal orb and a glass shard, he joins the artifacts together, resulting in a glowing, surprisingly mobile sphere that knocks him unconscious. He awakens in another place, one with unknown, sophisticated technology, that he soon learns isn’t even on Earth. The glowing sphere transported him to a kingdom on planet Lyra. As far as the Lyrians are concerned, Al-Khidr’s home world is cursed. A space mission there millennia ago brought back the deadly disease Mutmut, which kills nearly every male Lyrian it infects. There’s still no cure, but Al-Khidr promises benevolent Queen Hathor that he’ll find one if he returns to Earth. Unfortunately, a growing uprising against the queen, along with the Lyrians’ fear of the “alien-human” from that wretched planet, threatens everyone. Odin’s deliberately paced tale delivers tense set pieces; even before Mutmut-phobic Lyrians prove dangerous, Al-Khidr faces off against thieving bandits in Giza. Moreover, the narrative spotlight illuminates the entire cast and includes a lengthy backstory about the largely secret Earth mission, which involved betrayal and murder. The author’s straightforward prose weaves real-life history into the narrative with panache. The story features delightful references to the origins of Egypt’s pyramids as well as Lyrians sharing names with historical figures. As this is Book 1 of a trilogy, Odin leaves some things unresolved, like Al-Khidr’s potential adversary back on Earth and Lyra’s troublesome pirates and bounty hunters, whom readers never see. Still, the frenzied ending makes tracking down Book 2 a virtual necessity.
Sharp characterization boosts this leisurely paced but engrossing SF series opener.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-954313-06-4
Page Count: 409
Publisher: Odin Fantasy World
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
IMAX-scale bleeding-edge techno-horror from a writer with a freshly sharpened scalpel and time on his hands.
The world as we know it ended in Wanderers, Wendig’s 2019 bestseller. Now what?
A sequel to a pandemic novel written during an actual pandemic sounds pretty intense, and this one doesn’t disappoint, heightened by its author’s deft narrative skills, killer cliffhangers, and a not inconsiderable amount of bloodletting. To recap: A plague called White Mask decimated humanity, with a relative handful saved by a powerful AI called Black Swan that herded this hypnotized flock to Ouray, Colorado. Among the survivors are Benji Ray, a scientist formerly with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Shana Stewart, who is pregnant and the reluctant custodian of the evolving AI (via nanobots, natch); Sheriff Marcy Reyes; and pastor Matthew Bird. In Middle America, President Ed Creel, a murdering, bigoted, bullying Trump clone, raises his own army of scumbags to fight what remains of the culture wars. When Black Swan kidnaps Shana’s child, she and Benji set off on another cross-country quest to find a way to save him. On their way to CDC headquarters, they pick up hilariously foulmouthed rock god Pete Corley, back from delivering Willie Nelson’s guitar to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This novel is an overflowing font of treasures peppered with more than a few pointed barbs for any Christofacists or Nazis who might have wandered in by accident. Where Wanderers was about flight in the face of menace, this is an old-fashioned quest with a small band of noble heroes trying to save the world while a would-be tyrant gathers his forces. All those big beats, not least a cataclysmic showdown in Atlanta, are tempered by the book’s more intimate struggles, from Shana’s primal instinct to recover her boy to the grief Pete buries beneath levity to Matthew Bird’s near-constant grapple with guilt. It’s a lot to take in, but Pete’s ribald, bombastic humor as well as funny interstitials and epigraphs temper the horror within.
IMAX-scale bleeding-edge techno-horror from a writer with a freshly sharpened scalpel and time on his hands.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-15877-7
Page Count: 816
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Elegiac and elliptical, this slim novel is a sobering read.
Six astronauts on a space station orbit the planet over the course of a single Earth day.
Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth, a space station goes round and round. Over the course of 24 hours, the astronauts inside experience sunrise and sunset 16 times. Though they're supposed to keep their schedules in tune with a normal “daily” routine, they exist in a dream-like liminal space, weightless, out of time, captivated and astonished by the “ringing singing lightness” of the globe always in view. “What would it be to lose this?” is the question that spurs Harvey’s nimble swoops and dives into the minds of the six astronauts (as well as a few of the earthbound characters, past and present). There are gentle eddies of plot: The Japanese astronaut, Chie, has just received word that her elderly mother has died; six other astronauts are currently on their way to a moon landing; a “super-typhoon” barrels toward the Philippines; one of the two cosmonauts, Anton, has discovered a lump on his neck. But overall this book is a meditation, zealously lyrical, about the profundity and precarity of our imperiled planet. It’s surely difficult to write a book in which the main character is a giant rock in space—and the book can feel ponderous at times, especially in the middle—but Harvey’s deliberate slowed-down time and repetitions are entirely the point. Like the astronauts, we are forced to meditate on the notion that “not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s…a universe of sidelines, that there is no centre.” Is this a crisis or an opportunity? Harvey treats this question as both a narrative and an existential dilemma.
Elegiac and elliptical, this slim novel is a sobering read.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802161543
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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