An inventive tribal tale hampered by problematic racial attitudes and extraneous details.
In this novel, a young man in a future Pacific Northwest finds his purpose in a homoerotic culture that combines Native American–derived spirituality with militarism.
The first book in this series, Paradigm Lost: Jamari and the Manhood Rites (2015), introduced the Elk Creek Tribe in the state of Lincoln, once southwestern Oregon. It’s 2115, 75 years after the Fall of 2040. Jamari, a young white man—his blond hair and blue eyes are unusual among the Native American and Pacific Islander–looking Tribe—begins to find his place. Now about 17, Jamari decides it’s time to leave childhood behind, meaning he must prove his maturity. In his society, men and women live strictly apart, coming together only to mate (for most, reluctantly and as a duty owed the Tribe). Women raise the children until the boys are old enough to join all-male, age-segregated hearths. Young men are trained according to an organized, hierarchical system that includes regular sexual contact with older “Night Studies” mentors. Although the Tribe’s religious customs incorporate many traditional Native American practices, such as sage smudging (purifying a space with the smoke of sacred plants), Gnosticism is important as well. Jamari considers himself Christian because “I like to be on the winning team…the Christian God is the one who threw down every other over the millenniums.” Jamari discovers more about the Tribe, its lands, and its history and begins learning how to be a shaman, showing remarkable aptitude. A long, dangerous expedition tests his skills and commitment, earning respect from others and allowing him to prove his worth to the group. Speculative fiction often provides a way to question contemporary mores by upending them, and Rowe (Paradigm Lost: Eros Times, 2017, etc.) certainly accomplishes this. In his world, “straight” means “homosexual,” and heterosexuality is a problem: a character who prefers women “faces a significant challenge in molding himself into the tribal culture. We’ve been working with him to help him fight it.” Also thought-provoking is how the author mixes genres in unexpected ways, blending sci-fi with erotica, military life, and philosophical and spiritual musings, although his tone can be rather dry: “Anyone who interacts sexually with [uncircumcised] Kenny will need to be willing to allow Kenny the time to take some extra steps in establishing and maintaining cleanliness,” instructs a mentor. Unfortunately, the many unnecessary details concerning logistics, sightseeing, and work assignments slow down the story. Great attention is given to militia ranks and everyone’s physical appearance, whether this contributes to the plot or not. In addition, the tale’s racial views are disconcerting. For example, the Tribe has no African-Americans because the founding members selected no one from the inner city (apparently the only place blacks live), adopting the rule “No Asians. No Irish. No Russians. No Africans.” The almost total absence of women, whose lives are a mystery, is also a drawback, making it difficult to see how this society works as a totality.
An inventive tribal tale hampered by problematic racial attitudes and extraneous details.Pub Date: April 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5434-1576-6
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2017
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
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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