A detailed, if blandly plotted, SF adventure with great tech.
A futuristic bounty hunter goes on a lucrative mission to Mars to find a businesswoman’s husband in Dalzell’s SF novel.
It’s the 26th century, and as this book opens, bounty hunter Owen Bone is looking for a kidnapped teenage girl named Solange who’s being held hostage by a drug dealer. Owen and his robot sidekick, Sandi, manage to rescue the girl; it’s revealed that Owen has formidable skills as a mercenary and that the robot has seemingly limitless strength, and both of these factors prove invaluable during the mission. There’s no time for the pair to rest, though, as businesswoman and scientist Stella Ling recruits them to find her husband, a member of the Chinese Politburo who’s taken off to the colonized planet Mars with a sizable chunk of Stella’s money and other valuables. Owen is happy with the promise of a $10 million payment, but once he’s on the red planet, he faces unexpected obstacles. As he and Sandi become acquainted with the Martian bureaucracy, they realize that the job was actually a ruse, and their true objective is to eliminate a sly and powerful man named Wilson Black. Owen and Sandi find themselves tested as he leads them on an interplanetary chase that pushes them to their limits. Dalzell offers an intriguing vision of Earth in the future that eagerly dives into details regarding the financial and political workings of China, Russia, and other countries. Along the way, it also provides some darker sections that deal with greed, mining, and developing worlds that never really develop. The Mars colony, the spaceships, and the robotics all come with unique inventions and advancements, which only further highlight Dalzell’s impressive worldbuilding. The main plot, however, is a rather simple space-based caper with a bit of cat-and-mouse, and occasional typos in the text distract from the novel’s strengths.
A detailed, if blandly plotted, SF adventure with great tech.Pub Date: April 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73460-550-1
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An epic space adventure.
A thief and a teleporter team up to save their former crew in the finale of Mihalik's Starlight's Shadow trilogy.
Lexi Bowen is one of the most accomplished recovery specialists—code for thief—in the galaxy. She's nervous about taking a contract that requires her to return to Valovia, home planet of the ruthless enemies she once fought as a soldier, but the payout is too enticing to decline. Once she arrives on Valovia, she is almost immediately cornered by the Empress Nepru’s private guards. Teleporter Nilo Shoren appears in the middle of the altercation and teleports her to safety. Lexi’s history with Nilo is complicated. They were both crew members on Starlight’s Shadow, but Lexi has never forgiven Nilo for luring her to what she thought was a date only for him to steal a job right out from under her. She can’t understand why Nilo would save her now, and she’s determined to escape Valovia on her own. Nilo convinces her to accept his help escaping the empress, but their plans change when they discover Starlight’s Shadow and its crew are missing. Lexi and Nilo suspect that their friends were heading for the planet Rodeni, trying to capture a fugitive, and they set a course to mount a rescue mission. Lexi is a likable, tough-as-nails character determined to make it on her own. The truth is that she suffers flashbacks and panic attacks from the war, and she is afraid to show her vulnerabilities to Nilo. Although she tries to convince herself that her attraction to Nilo isn’t serious, she finds it impossible to resist him. In order to be together, they must learn to trust and openly communicate with each other, whether on the battlefield or in the bedroom.
An epic space adventure.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780063051102
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
Punchy, plausible, and bittersweet; studded with zingers until the very last line.
The desperate logistics of planning for the apocalypse reach their climax in the conclusion to a space opera trilogy that began with The Collapsing Empire (2017) and The Consuming Fire (2018).
Time is running out for Cardenia Wu-Patrick, aka Grayland II, emperox of the planet-spanning Interdependency. As she struggles to come up with a plan to save the billions who will suffer and starve in the wake of the collapse of the Flow, the extradimensional network connecting the planets of her far-flung empire, her nemesis, Lady Nadashe Nohamapetan, continues to scheme against her. With the support of many of the noble houses—who plan to abandon their subjects while preserving themselves and their wealth in a flight to End, the only self-sufficient planet in the Interdependency—Nadashe now seeks the throne for herself. Meanwhile, Cardenia’s lover, the Flow physicist Lord Marce Claremont, attempts to devise a scientific solution to the Flow collapse, unaware that Cardenia is hiding vital data from him. And the clever but hot-tempered Lady Kiva Lagos attempts to spy on Nadashe in hopes of defusing the coup, but she may have gotten herself in too deep this time. Scalzi treads a delicate line here: He set out to chart an apocalypse, and a deus ex machina would be cheating. The book also serves as an acknowledgment that intelligence and good intentions are not an impregnable armor against venality and the pitiless laws of physics. (In addition to slowing down Scalzi's writing—something he acknowledges in an afterword—the current sociopolitical situation in the U.S. has clearly flavored the story.) Given those parameters, Scalzi plays fair while still offering his readers some hope. And even when depicting the direst situations, Scalzi’s work retains its snarky cheer.
Punchy, plausible, and bittersweet; studded with zingers until the very last line.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8916-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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