Not altogether satisfying, but Hamilton expertly keeps his audience coming back for more.
First of a projected alien-contact trilogy from one of the leading purveyors (A Night Without Stars, 2016, etc.) of doorstopper space operas—although this one squeezes in at a positively emaciated 576 pages.
Early in the 23rd century, when a wrecked alien ship turns up on a remote planet, the all-powerful Connexion Corp, which provides instantaneous travel via quantum-entangled, step-through portals, organizes a team to investigate: security chief Feriton Kayne; Connexion bigwig Yuri Alster; Callum Hepburn, who works for the Utopials, an independent human civilization; Alik Monday, an FBI operative from Corporate Earth; and various assistants. What’s aboard the alien vessel proves both difficult to fathom and extremely unnerving. The actual investigation moves at glacial speed, though, interspersed as it is with backstories involving team members plus chapters in an independent thread set in the far future, where child soldiers train to meet a mysterious and all-conquering alien enemy. In the present, meanwhile, we hear about two sets of aliens. The nonhuman Olyix have stopped off at Earth to refuel on their endless voyage across the universe, where, at the end of time, they expect to meet their god; they seem benevolent, but not everyone agrees. The Neána, whom readers know about but none of the characters may, arrived secretly some years ago, grew some human bodies, and sent them out to do—what? So, readers will contend with a choppy narrative, obvious delays and sidebars, and long stretches that read like an editor’s advice to a first novelist on how not to introduce your characters or propel the storyline and veer dangerously close to dull. It’s a yarn, however, that packs a teeth-rattling wallop when it finally gets there.
Not altogether satisfying, but Hamilton expertly keeps his audience coming back for more.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-17876-4
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
This brilliant bit of nihilism succeeds where so many self-described transgressive novels do not: It's dangerous because...
Brutal and relentless debut fiction takes anarcho-S&M chic to a whole new level—in a creepy, dystopic, confrontational novel that's also cynically smart and sharply written.
Palahniuk's insomniac narrator, a drone who works as a product recall coordinator, spends his free time crashing support groups for the dying. But his after-hours life changes for the weirder when he hooks up with Tyler Durden, a waiter and projectionist with plans to screw up the world—he's a "guerilla terrorist of the service industry." "Project Mayhem" seems taken from a page in The Anarchist Cookbook and starts small: Durden splices subliminal scenes of porno into family films and he spits into customers' soup. Things take off, though, when he begins the fight club—a gruesome late-night sport in which men beat each other up as partial initiation into Durden's bigger scheme: a supersecret strike group to carry out his wilder ideas. Durden finances his scheme with a soap-making business that secretly steals its main ingredient—the fat sucked from liposuction. Durden's cultlike groups spread like wildfire, his followers recognizable by their open wounds and scars. Seeking oblivion and self-destruction, the leader preaches anarchist fundamentalism: "Losing all hope was freedom," and "Everything is falling apart"—all of which is just his desperate attempt to get God's attention. As the narrator begins to reject Durden's revolution, he starts to realize that the legendary lunatic is just himself, or the part of himself that takes over when he falls asleep. Though he lands in heaven, which closely resembles a psycho ward, the narrator/Durden lives on in his flourishing clubs.
This brilliant bit of nihilism succeeds where so many self-described transgressive novels do not: It's dangerous because it's so compelling.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03976-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
BOOK TO SCREEN
Well written, but does not really rise much above the rest of the teeming post-apocalyptic pack.
The first in a post-pandemic trilogy.
The midwife of the title is an obstetric nurse in San Francisco when an unknown disease strikes; it kills men but is more devastating to women. For women giving birth, it is a virtual death sentence for both mother and child. The nurse falls ill herself but ultimately wakes alone in a hospital bed, surrounded by bodies and her doctor boyfriend either dead himself or long gone. After an unpleasant year spent in a sparsely populated city sprinkled with male predators, she decides to move on in search of something better. Disguising herself as a man and taking many names to protect herself both physically and emotionally from anyone getting too close, she travels across the country, quietly offering birth control to the enslaved women she encounters and defending herself from scavengers and potential rapists. After a troubled interlude with a young Mormon couple fleeing their increasingly unstable community, she eventually finds her way to a small settlement on what remains of a military base, where she devotes herself to passing on her skills and attempting to deliver a surviving baby. Similarly to The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power, the book has a framing device set generations later in that same settlement, where the midwife’s journals are kept and she is venerated as a sacred figure. But confusingly, the story is not solely drawn from her journals; with no explanation, an omniscient narrator occasionally jumps in to reveal information that neither the midwife nor the future residents of the town could possibly know. While knowing the fates of the characters who pass out of the midwife’s life provides closure, it also undercuts the integrity of the story. The somewhat abrupt ending also feels somewhat unsatisfying; after a leisurely (if disturbing) account of the days and months of the midwife’s travels, the author suddenly packs years of her life into the last few pages.
Well written, but does not really rise much above the rest of the teeming post-apocalyptic pack.Pub Date: June 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-5039-3911-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: 47North
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2019
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