This intricate, big-data blast delivers a thrilling ride for cyberpunk SF fans.
Various factions in a tech-choked future nation-state compete ruthlessly for possession of an enigmatic, revolutionary device that could change everything.
Henderson—a professed admirer of William Gibson’s trendsetting Neuromancer (1984)—launches an ambitious cyberpunk SF series via this high-density download of digital intrigue, violent action, and radical body modification. The setting is the nation-state of Naion, roughly situated near today’s Singapore. The multitiered, cobbled-together—partially out of cargo containers—metropolis/environment is hermetically sealed against the toxic atmosphere of a future Earth reset by war, pollution, and plague. The millions inhabiting the roiling Naion, linked by the internetlike “Nebula,” range from artificial intelligence entities and humanoid robots to post-humans laden with cybernetic implants and upgrades. Seemingly all are subject to the machinations of powerful corporations and the government. Enforcing law and order falls to competing interests—from street-level “vigilants” to the state agency called Capca, which suffers a blow early on with the death of Yiju Gainen, an ambassador’s kidnapped little daughter, in a botched raid. The tragedy turns out to be one of a number of feints and schemes within schemes centered on possession of the Acorn, a mystery item promising amazing new mind-machine technology or incriminating data on a brewing scandal—or both, or neither, or more. While corporate mercenaries, minions, and idealists loyal to Capca try to trace the Acorn’s trail of murder and deceit through the “arcology,” it is Neon Nik, an obscure, down-on-his-luck hacker, who becomes the plot’s fulcrum when he inherits this MacGuffin from a deceased priest. Numerous key characters are dead even before the narrative commences, not helping with lucidity. But with the nature of the Acorn still unresolved at the end, the complex storyline offers enjoyable gigabytes of what SF fans used to call k-kewl: disintegrating urban environments; dives into virtual reality (including a dandy description of what social media might resemble); noirish attitude; sinister malware; transnational, multicultural mélanges for characters; and a knowledge base thicker than Windows 10 OS requirements to “grok” (decipher) the lingo. (“Upon command, Jilly’s friend list extruded from the sky. He locked onto Castir Shea’s puck coordinates and sent off his mote. He moved at light speed across an ocean of nonspace, from his data island to Castir’s, in a gust of infinite nothing.”) A prologue enumerates the sizable cast, a Tolstoy-size pantheon of major players.
This intricate, big-data blast delivers a thrilling ride for cyberpunk SF fans.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73575-909-8
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2021
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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