A somewhat wooden science-fiction thriller that drifts into existential—even mystical—territory.
Moskovitz concludes his science-fiction trilogy with this novel about the secret origin—and potential future—of humanity.
Advances in science have done away with the need for religion—at least until evidence of intelligent design is discovered encoded into people’s DNA. The Church of the Double Helix rises as a new religious force, its worship built around musical translations of messages in the DNA code—messages from beings in a parallel universe detailing the creation of humanity. Fifteen-year-old prodigy Natasha Takana attends its services every Sunday, attempting to decipher the incomplete message. “A dying civilization in a parallel world, facing annihilation, had reached across the boundary between worlds to preserve its legacy. What, Natasha wondered, were the events that had driven them nearly to extinction?” Had anyone from that world survived? Natasha manages to ride the music into that parallel dimension, where the Creators themselves offer her a warning for the future. Elsewhere, journalist Lena Holbrook is investigating a remote back-to-basics commune in Oregon. She is particularly interested in a couple who live there with their preternaturally gifted daughter, Macklyn. Meanwhile, a small group of genetically engineered immortals known as Lazarus plot to gain control of Natasha or Macklyn, or both, and thereby breed a new generation of superhumans. Moskovitz’s prose is reliably lean and exact: “Abraham began his rounds just after daybreak. After the previous day’s squall and a light rain during the night, the sand underfoot was damp and dense and the fruit on the trees glistened.” The novel draws together the storylines of previous books in the Brink of Life trilogy in a way that is thematically coherent, if not exactly emotionally satisfying. The characters here are stiffer than in past works, and the narrative feels a bit less organic. Moskovitz, who also wrote The Brink of Life (2019), asks questions that are ambitious and vast—about the nature of humanity, the origin of life, the future of the planet—and the novel is short enough that it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The book makes its landing without coming apart, but it does so without the panache fans of the previous volumes have likely hoped for.
A somewhat wooden science-fiction thriller that drifts into existential—even mystical—territory.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73417-892-0
Page Count: 173
Publisher: Fluke Tale Productions
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning.
An intrepid teen encounters the dark secrets of the elite in her climate-ravaged world in this translated work from South Korea.
Sixteen-year-old Jeon Chobahm is shocked to learn that Goh Haeri, the beloved reality TV star who happens to be Chobahm’s look-alike, just died by suicide—and also that she’s being asked to become Haeri’s secret replacement. In their frozen, post-apocalyptic world, Chobahm, like everyone around her, leads a bleak life. She bundles up daily against the dangerous cold and toils in a power plant. But now she’ll live Haeri’s cushy life in Snowglobe, an exclusive, glass-dome-enclosed community, where the climate is mild, and the resident actors’ lives are broadcast as entertainment for those in the open world. As glamorous as life there may seem, however, Chobahm quickly learns that there’s a sinister underbelly: People are killed off when they’re no longer useful, and there’s something strange about Haeri’s family dynamics. As she meets a host of new companions, including Yi Bonwhe, the heir of Snowglobe’s founding family, Chobahm discovers a devastating secret and embarks on a risky plan to expose the truth. Climate change, societal inequity, and the ethics of escaping from our own lives by watching others’ are addressed in this intelligent, absorbing book. Chobahm is a complex character inhabiting a strongly developed world, and her compassion, ambition, outrage, and sorrow ring true.
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning. (Dystopian. 12-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593484975
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK TO SCREEN
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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