Regulars know where Wilson is coming from and probably won’t mind, but it’s impossible to avoid just a tinge of...
Skewed, alternate-world, aliens-among-us yarn from the talented author of Julian Comstock (2009).
The world Cassie Iverson of Buffalo inhabits has been peaceful since the Great Armistice of 1914. As a result, social welfare has advanced, technology has lagged and computing is primitive. Cassie, however, is a member of the Correspondence Society which, years ago, discovered that the atmosphere’s radio-reflective layer is actually a living entity, a cellular hypercolony that mimics intelligence through sheer computational power. And through its human agents, or sims, who look normal but have no individual awareness and bleed green goo, it controls human progress. In 2007, sims murdered Cassie’s parents and other leading Society members; the rest scattered and went into hiding. She lives now with her aunt Nerissa and younger brother Thomas. One night when Nerissa is out, she sees a sim watching the house—a sim that dies in a traffic accident crossing the road, leaking green goo—and immediately flees with Thomas to Leo Beck, another Society member who lives nearby. Together, they formulate a desperate plan to locate Leo’s rich father, Werner, who has long nurtured plans to destroy the hypercolony. Meanwhile, in rural Vermont, another sim visits Cassie’s reclusive uncle Ethan—but this sim says it wants to talk. When Nerissa shows up, they disable the sim and interrogate it. It says it isn’t part of the hypercolony but another, parasitical, entity—and it says it wants their help. This dazzling, complex and typically weird backdrop, augmented by nifty, character-driven plotting and action, leaves no doubt that it’s all scarily real. However, later revelations tend to undermine all this excellent work, leaving a final third that doesn’t convincingly add up.
Regulars know where Wilson is coming from and probably won’t mind, but it’s impossible to avoid just a tinge of disappointment.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3261-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
A hackneyed sci-fi spectacle.
From the author of Ready Player One (2011), another book centered around video games and the 1980s.
Teenager Zack Lightman loves playing games online with his friends, although any similarities to teenagers of today end there. He’s obsessed with '80s science fiction, ostensibly because it’s a way to fill the void left by his dead father. In the attic, Zack finds not only his dad’s favorite movies on VHS, but also a detailed conspiracy theory his father wrote when he was 19, claiming video games and movies about alien invasions have been secretly funded by a shadowy organization to prepare humanity for the real thing. It’s a crazy theory that, of course, turns out to be absolutely true. When aliens invade, Zack is whisked away to a secret training facility where he learns the game he’s devoted years of his life to playing has always been an advanced tactical simulation, much like the plot to the 1984 movie The Last Starfighter. Now, Zack and his fellow gamers must step up and defend Earth for real. In the hands of a more skilled writer, the book could have drawn on familiar stories to launch into a new science-fiction adventure. Instead, it offers little more than interminable video game–style battles and timeworn tropes, including a plot twist that can be seen coming for miles. Zack’s love interest is impossibly attractive, swigs booze from an R2-D2 flask, and laughs at all his jokes—a nerd-fantasy centerfold and just as one-dimensional. Meanwhile, Zack’s two friends are indistinguishable from one another and do little more than argue over geek minutiae, because as everyone knows, that’s all nerds ever do. However, in the end, it’s the unrelenting references to '80s movies that squander any possible tension in the narrative. Readers never doubt whether the good guys will win because they’re constantly reminded: good guys always win in the movies.
A hackneyed sci-fi spectacle.Pub Date: July 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3725-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A wholly original, engrossing, disturbing, and beautiful book. You’ve never read anything quite like this, and you won’t...
A spellbinding story of world-altering power and revenge from debut novelist Hawkins.
Carolyn’s life changed forever when she was 8. That was the year her ordinary suburban subdivision was destroyed and the man she now calls Father took her and 11 other children to study in his very unusual Library. Carolyn studied languages—and not only human ones. The other children studied the ways of beasts, learned healing and resurrection, and wandered in the lands of the dead or in possible futures. Now they’re all in their 30s, and Father is missing. Carolyn and the others are trying to find him—but Carolyn has her own agenda and her own feelings about the most dangerous of her adopted siblings, David, who has spent years perfecting the arts of murder and war. Carolyn is an engaging heroine with a wry sense of humor, and Steve, the ordinary American ally she recruits, helps keep the book grounded in reality despite the ever growing strangeness that swirls around them. Like the Library itself, the book is bigger, darker, and more dangerous than it seems. The plot never flags, and it’s never predictable. Hawkins has created a fascinating, unusual world in which ordinary people can learn to wield breathtaking power—and he’s also written a compelling story about love and revenge that never loses sight of the human emotions at its heart.
A wholly original, engrossing, disturbing, and beautiful book. You’ve never read anything quite like this, and you won’t soon forget it.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-41860-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
PROFILES
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