Huge War of the Worlds stuff (war of the galaxies, actually): satisfying, tragic, and spectacular.
An alliance of humans and aliens prepares for a devastating attack by a mysterious, destructive force from another galaxy in this sequel.
In Williamson’s (Encounters, 2012) sci-fi epic, the humans of Amular are drastically transformed by alien first-contact with a blobular species nicknamed the Loud (for the earsplitting howls through which they converse). A millennium more advanced, the Loud grant the humans immortality (best for consistent trade over light-year distances) and undreamt-of technologies. But shockingly, the Loud’s home star system is destroyed by a menace even they can’t comprehend, a theoretical superrace nicknamed the Spiral Slayers, who have been piloting black holes and annihilating intelligence-bearing worlds since time immemorial. The first book ended with the humans resisting hopelessness, determined to fight against a nearly godlike entity heading toward Amular. The sequel nimbly covers the two-century timeline of the Slayer ship’s 200 light-years approach, as a Loud-human coalition mounts defenses and fallbacks against the invader. But a psychotic, disgraced human politician, who, with newfound immortality, allows his feuds to reach extinction level, starts a conspiracy-minded, anti-Loud terrorist movement (not unlike today’s climate-change deniers). Moreover, the Capt. Kirk–like series hero, Adm. Adamarus Maximus, gravitates toward infidelity against his now-rejuvenated, loyal wife (one of the few campy conceits of the material: hotties with heavenly bodies abounding). And what if the Loud are hiding something after all? In this novel, the author continues a saga of cataclysm on a cosmological scale, rivaling big-ideas authors Gregory Benford, Alastair Reynolds, Olaf Stapledon, et al. Williamson’s introduction defends his decision to set the plot—dated 300 million years ago—around an Earth surrogate. With a parallel evolution, Amular has flora, fauna, and a society practically identical to Earth. But by sidestepping details like political parties and national and ethnic affiliations, he gracefully shears off baggage that might have been cumbersome stuff as events hurtle toward a white-knuckle doomsday battle. Perhaps the long-time-ago-in-a-galaxy-far-far-away thing will pay off in one of the two more projected volumes in the series. Readers should be eager for more of Williamson’s shock-and-awe storytelling either way.
Huge War of the Worlds stuff (war of the galaxies, actually): satisfying, tragic, and spectacular.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5370-8593-7
Page Count: 664
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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