More rollicking space adventures for lovable pirates.
Adda, Iridian, and their pirate friends escape a killer artificial intelligence only to fall prey to an insidious corporation.
Finally free of Barbary Station and the rogue AI that trapped them there in Barbary Station (2017), Captain Sloane leads the crew, Adda and Iridian included, back to the pirates’ home base on Vesta. Adda and Iridian asked the Captain to officiate their wedding, and they’re excited to start spending their pirate booty. Expecting a hero’s welcome, they are instead met by representatives of Oxia Corporation, which took over the minor planet in Sloane’s absence. Oxia coerces the crew into running some errands, like stealing a massive printer, hijacking a prototype ship, and forcing an astronomer to sign an Oxia contract. Meanwhile, Adda discovers that the AI from Barbary Station, AegiSKADA, is alive (so to speak). It’s less powerful and under Adda’s control but still dangerous. Adda, an AI specialist, knows she should just shut it down, but she’s too tempted by what she could learn from it, and she decides to keep AegiSKADA a secret. Eventually the pirates figure out why Oxia wanted that printer, ship, and astronomer, and the secret is big enough that the pirates may be able to use it to their advantage. But Adda and Iridian may not be able to trust Captain Sloane, and the strain of keeping AegiSKADA under control is getting to Adda. Oxia’s tasks provide plenty of excitement, like when the pirates steal not just the printer, but the entire lab housing it. The virtual space where Adda interacts with the AI is inventive and makes those passages easier for readers to parse. The characters mostly take a back seat to the action, but the ending sets up a compelling premise for the upcoming third novel.
More rollicking space adventures for lovable pirates.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7689-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.
An independent young girl finds a blue door in a field and glimpses another world, nudging her onto a path of discovery, destiny, empowerment, and love.
Set at the turn of the 20th century, Harrow's debut novel centers on January Scaller, who grows up under the watchful eye of the wealthy Cornelius Locke, who employs her father, Julian, to travel the globe in search of odd objects and valuable treasures to pad his collection, housed in a sprawling Vermont mansion. January appears to have a charmed childhood but is stifled by the high-society old boy’s club of Mr. Locke and his friends, who treat her as a curiosity—a mixed-race girl with a precocious streak, forced into elaborate outfits and docile behavior for the annual society gatherings. When she's 17, her father seemingly disappears, and January finds a book that will change her life forever. With her motley crew of allies—Samuel, the grocer’s son; Jane, the Kenyan woman sent by Julian to be January’s companion; and Bad, her faithful dog—January embarks on an adventure that will lead her to discover secrets about Mr. Locke, the world and its hidden doorways, and her own family. Harrow employs the image of the door (“Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges”) as well as the metaphor (a “geometry of absence”) to great effect. Similes and vivid imagery adorn nearly every page like glittering garlands. While some stereotypes are present, such as the depiction of East African women as pantherlike, the book has a diverse cast of characters and a strong woman lead. This portal fantasy doesn’t shy away from racism, classism, and sexism, which helps it succeed as an interesting story.
A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-42199-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Mandel’s solid writing and magnetic narrative make for a strong combination in what should be a breakout novel.
Survivors and victims of a pandemic populate this quietly ambitious take on a post-apocalyptic world where some strive to preserve art, culture and kindness.
In her fourth novel, Mandel (The Lola Quartet, 2012, etc.) moves away from the literary thriller form of her previous books but keeps much of the intrigue. The story concerns the before and after of a catastrophic virus called the Georgia Flu that wipes out most of the world’s population. On one side of the timeline are the survivors, mainly a traveling troupe of musicians and actors and a stationary group stuck for years in an airport. On the other is a professional actor, who dies in the opening pages while performing King Lear, his ex-wives and his oldest friend, glimpsed in flashbacks. There’s also the man—a paparazzo-turned-paramedic—who runs to the stage from the audience to try to revive him, a Samaritan role he will play again in later years. Mandel is effectively spare in her depiction of both the tough hand-to-mouth existence of a devastated world and the almost unchallenged life of the celebrity—think of Cormac McCarthy seesawing with Joan Didion. The intrigue arises when the troupe is threatened by a cult and breaks into disparate offshoots struggling toward a common haven. Woven through these little odysseys, and cunningly linking the cushy past and the perilous present, is a figure called the Prophet. Indeed, Mandel spins a satisfying web of coincidence and kismet while providing numerous strong moments, as when one of the last planes lands at the airport and seals its doors in self-imposed quarantine, standing for days on the tarmac as those outside try not to ponder the nightmare within. Another strand of that web is a well-traveled copy of a sci-fi graphic novel drawn by the actor’s first wife, depicting a space station seeking a new home after aliens take over Earth—a different sort of artist also pondering man’s fate and future.
Mandel’s solid writing and magnetic narrative make for a strong combination in what should be a breakout novel.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-35330-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Station Eleven Miniseries to Star Mackenzie Davis
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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