by Rob Bartlett ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
Great characters, a fiendish plot, sex, and violence—and even some theology: a terrific read.
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A vampire/businessman works to emancipate his sentient spaceship partner in this SF, second in a series.
In The Turing Revolt (2019), narrator Milo Sapphire was a far-future spaceship captain and interstellar trader who launched a rebellion against the ruling Mercantile Empire to free Sentient Ships from debt slavery. After gunning down an operative of the Lotus Eaters Society, the empire’s secret police, Milo has retreated to Calla’cara, a vacation planet populated by talking dinosaurs and empathic crocodile mounts. As CEO of Interstellar Products, Milo’s mission now is to nail down ironclad emancipation formalities, involving financial and legal instruments such as reports, bonds, audits, and contracts, by marshalling his small army of wereanimals and related allies. Milo must also rescue his lover from the cruel clutches of secret-police director Archibald Cox and work out an appropriate revenge while ensuring that Calla’cara can resist takeover by the empire. In Milo’s favor, he’s a roughly 1,000-year-old vampire (thanks to a virus that’s also an inner advising voice) and the Chosen of the Adversary as well as “the scariest motherfucker in the room.” In the first half of this novel, Bartlett pulls off the seemingly impossible—an entertainingly taut, intricate bureaucracy caper centered on filing documents with split-second timing. The second half builds to a dramatic action-thriller conclusion, the many threads clarified throughout by clever exposition. True, Milo’s heroic love life (such as a “personal harem”) is eye-roll–worthy but of a piece with his genial arrogance; he’s also taken down a peg or two by characters like his virus, who mocks him with laughter and the nickname “meatsack.” And, despite Milo’s smug self-confidence, to his own surprise, he genuinely cares for his crew.
Great characters, a fiendish plot, sex, and violence—and even some theology: a terrific read.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Jessie Mihalik ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 20, 2023
An epic space adventure.
A thief and a teleporter team up to save their former crew in the finale of Mihalik's Starlight's Shadow trilogy.
Lexi Bowen is one of the most accomplished recovery specialists—code for thief—in the galaxy. She's nervous about taking a contract that requires her to return to Valovia, home planet of the ruthless enemies she once fought as a soldier, but the payout is too enticing to decline. Once she arrives on Valovia, she is almost immediately cornered by the Empress Nepru’s private guards. Teleporter Nilo Shoren appears in the middle of the altercation and teleports her to safety. Lexi’s history with Nilo is complicated. They were both crew members on Starlight’s Shadow, but Lexi has never forgiven Nilo for luring her to what she thought was a date only for him to steal a job right out from under her. She can’t understand why Nilo would save her now, and she’s determined to escape Valovia on her own. Nilo convinces her to accept his help escaping the empress, but their plans change when they discover Starlight’s Shadow and its crew are missing. Lexi and Nilo suspect that their friends were heading for the planet Rodeni, trying to capture a fugitive, and they set a course to mount a rescue mission. Lexi is a likable, tough-as-nails character determined to make it on her own. The truth is that she suffers flashbacks and panic attacks from the war, and she is afraid to show her vulnerabilities to Nilo. Although she tries to convince herself that her attraction to Nilo isn’t serious, she finds it impossible to resist him. In order to be together, they must learn to trust and openly communicate with each other, whether on the battlefield or in the bedroom.
An epic space adventure.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780063051102
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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by John Scalzi ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
Punchy, plausible, and bittersweet; studded with zingers until the very last line.
The desperate logistics of planning for the apocalypse reach their climax in the conclusion to a space opera trilogy that began with The Collapsing Empire (2017) and The Consuming Fire (2018).
Time is running out for Cardenia Wu-Patrick, aka Grayland II, emperox of the planet-spanning Interdependency. As she struggles to come up with a plan to save the billions who will suffer and starve in the wake of the collapse of the Flow, the extradimensional network connecting the planets of her far-flung empire, her nemesis, Lady Nadashe Nohamapetan, continues to scheme against her. With the support of many of the noble houses—who plan to abandon their subjects while preserving themselves and their wealth in a flight to End, the only self-sufficient planet in the Interdependency—Nadashe now seeks the throne for herself. Meanwhile, Cardenia’s lover, the Flow physicist Lord Marce Claremont, attempts to devise a scientific solution to the Flow collapse, unaware that Cardenia is hiding vital data from him. And the clever but hot-tempered Lady Kiva Lagos attempts to spy on Nadashe in hopes of defusing the coup, but she may have gotten herself in too deep this time. Scalzi treads a delicate line here: He set out to chart an apocalypse, and a deus ex machina would be cheating. The book also serves as an acknowledgment that intelligence and good intentions are not an impregnable armor against venality and the pitiless laws of physics. (In addition to slowing down Scalzi's writing—something he acknowledges in an afterword—the current sociopolitical situation in the U.S. has clearly flavored the story.) Given those parameters, Scalzi plays fair while still offering his readers some hope. And even when depicting the direst situations, Scalzi’s work retains its snarky cheer.
Punchy, plausible, and bittersweet; studded with zingers until the very last line.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8916-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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