In the third installment of Biesele’s (The Saeshell Book of Time: Part 2: Rebirth of Innocents, 2013, etc.) sci-fi/fantasy series, two Earthlings embrace their destinies as allies and enemies complicate their path.
The story picks up on the planet Sophista, where evolutionarily advanced non-corporeal energy creatures live symbiotically with telepathic humans. The Sophistan collective is testing Stefan and Tova2—a powerful, mated pair of human hybrids, born on Earth, who have evolved into “new and unique life forms” and are fated to rule Earth and protect its telepaths. The Sophistans are ruthlessly logical and expect Stefan and Tova2 to rule rationally, but their own motivations are murky. Tova2 is forced to create and destroy a helpless life form, and, later, she and Stefan confront a nightmarish creature that has caused a Sophistan energy-matter hybrid to become sinister and violent. Later, Tova2 and Stefan find out that they, along with Stefan’s gifted younger sister, Aleah, are part of a creature called Atreyeu that exists outside of time. Stefan and Tova2’s future unborn son, who travels through time with Atreyeu’s offspring, also visits them at significant moments, watching as they negotiate challenges and locate telepaths on Earth, including the young Tyco and Ty. Along the way, author Biesele also provides substantive commentary on rationalism versus empathy, aggression versus passivity, and time paradoxes. Given the story’s vast complexity, the first two installments are required reading. Even then, this book’s many secretive characters, cacophonous telepathic conversations, ambiguous innuendos and non-sequential events will likely make the book quite difficult for casual readers to enjoy. It’s a dense amalgam of drama and philosophy that, even for aficionados, may require another installment to fully clarify.
A dense sci-fi tale that will likely appeal primarily to fans of previous books in the series.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1470100346
Page Count: 330
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | SCIENCE FICTION | SPACE
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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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