This perceptive take on the reality TV–in-the-future premise deserves boffo ratings.
Bruno’s SF novel follows the struggling inhabitants of a dilapidated space ark who are unwitting players in a cruel, hidden-camera reality show.
In the year 2450, the Ignis is an aging, ramshackle spaceship fashioned from an asteroid and presumably carrying approximately 10,000 refugees from a destroyed Earth to a colony world in the Tau Ceti star system. Every fragile resource, including birth, is highly regulated, so it’s impressive that a girl called Mission, conceived outside regulations and genetic assignments, survives to adulthood and blends in. There’s a bigger secret, however: Humankind, back on Earth, is still around. Although beset by floods, millions on 25th-century “High Earth” enjoy an idyllic lifestyle featuring robots, virtual-reality technology, and other media entertainment. The Ignis, it turns out, is still in orbit around Earth, providing a continuous hidden-camera feed for Ignis: Live, a 50-year-old reality TV show transmitting the real-time lives (and deaths) of the ship’s desperate inhabitants, including Mission. Asher Reinhart, chief director of content for the show, has watched Mission’s struggles and developed a strong emotional attachment to her. When he learns that a disaster is planned for the ship to boost sagging viewership, he intervenes to protect Mission from harm. This transgression backfires, putting Mission in even more danger and sending Asher into the anarchic Outskirts zone. Bruno is not the first, nor will he be the last, SF author to address reality television, but he mines rich veins of meaning in this stand-alone work. He also doesn’t skimp on the action, which includes grotesque cyborgs, but he also instills deep thought into his premise. There are familiar themes regarding the greed and ego of media elite and the fickle flukiness of celebrity, but the heart of the tale is an exploration of the contrast between the tech-saturated lifestyles of High Earth’s people and the hardscrabble ordeals that the Ignis’ courageous inhabitants encounter. The author also scores points for not aping the landmark twist of Daniel F. Galouye’s 1964 virtual-reality novel Simulacron-3, which also involved puppet masters monitoring a synthetic society.
This perceptive take on the reality TV–in-the-future premise deserves boffo ratings.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949890-72-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Aethon Books, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Buckle up—fans of page-turning SF may find themselves binge-reading this novel in one butt-numbing marathon session.
Like a truck with no brakes speeding down a steep mountain road, Islington’s latest is an adrenaline-fueled SF thrill ride that follows a biomechanically enhanced assassin as he tries to understand his mysterious origins.
The chaotic opening scene gives readers a clear indication of what they’re in for: Contract killer Azure, attempting to complete a mission, is involved in a life-or-death battle with a multieyed biomachine called an Argos. “The thing’s bipedal but has six gorilla-like arms that end in half-metre-long claws,” he complains. After Azure barely dispatches the monster and kills his target, his AI assistant, Atti, informs him of his next job: protecting an elderly—and incredibly rich—woman living in a sprawling underground bunker in the middle of nowhere. “Old Woman,” as Azure calls her, isn’t forthcoming with personal details; all Azure can suss out is that she may be the target of a powerful organized crime syndicate—the same organization that employs him! Is Azure’s ultimate goal to save her or kill her? Although the worldbuilding could’ve been more comprehensive, Islington’s editing choices are brilliant—he strips away the insignificant narrative content to create a streamlined, action-packed adventure with seemingly one goal: to keep the reader furiously turning pages. The various mysteries—Azure’s murky beginnings, the tragic death of his best friend years earlier, Old Woman’s true identity, etc.—maintain the momentum and intensity. The takeaway here is the narrative potential of the characters as well as the plethora of subjects that could be explored more deeply, like immortality for the rich, cloning, and the potential to create bioengineered nightmares for “security.” Islington leaves the conclusion tantalizingly ambiguous. This novel could be the jumping-off point for a memorable series.
Buckle up—fans of page-turning SF may find themselves binge-reading this novel in one butt-numbing marathon session.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781668239247
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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