An uneven but wonder-filled middle chapter in a cosmic-epic series.
Following a fatal assault on their solar system by an advanced race, a human-alien alliance chases the marauders across the cosmos in a giant ship cloned from the attacker’s technology.
Nobody can accuse Williamson (Countdown Armageddon, 2016, etc.) of thinking small midway through a four-part saga. In previous volumes (absolutely required to keep up), human natives of the planet Amular no sooner form a beneficial relationship with bloblike, advanced aliens they named the Loud when both species face extinction via mysterious, ancient hostiles that the Loud (who know more than they’re telling) call Spiral Slayers. Technologically superior beyond comprehension, the shadowy race sends giant “Blackships” to pilot and position black holes to destroy entire worlds and star systems. In the previous installment, humans and Loud barely survived the devastation of an attack on Amular by damaging a Blackship. Here, using debris from the (organic) doomsday device, they successfully clone their own huge “Whiteship,” which serves as a ship/colony as well as the ultimate weapon, to chase and confront the tool of the Spiral Slayers. But, across the vastness of space, it takes millennia, with humans necessarily in suspended animation at intervals. Williamson’s narrative leapfrogs through time, discarding the measured pace of earlier books for one in which centuries pass in a sentence, and a paragraph summarizes sensational superscience that might have engaged another writer for a full novel. In a near Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy development, bees in the Whiteship’s vast indoor park evolve en route into a new sentient species whose intellect and engineering overtakes Homo sapiens; they’re a deux ex machina (buzz ex machina?) in a hornet’s nest of revelations at the end. There is technology sufficiently advanced that it appears godlike and sci-fi storytelling magnified to the dimensions of myth—the title may signify that Williamson is mining the Homeric rather than the Arthur C. Clark–ian—with only broad strokes for characterizations and some of the archetypal underpinnings starting to show (the human hero is named Adamarus, the heroine Evelyn, hmm...). A peep inside a Blackship dispels some awe—imagine The Dark Crystal, only ickier. But a breathless to-be-continued finale should have readers hooked despite the inconsistencies.
An uneven but wonder-filled middle chapter in a cosmic-epic series.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-79269-588-9
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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