An indelible red-planet backdrop enhances an already rugged, tenacious story of a colony’s cadets learning to rely on one...
Part of a Mars terraforming settlement, a teenager has six days to figure out why doctors are repeatedly wiping her peers’ memories—and why she’s retained her own—in this sci-fi debut.
It’s been nearly a year since Lizzy Engram left Earth to join Mars Colony One, helping make the planet habitable. She’s one of numerous cadets working in biomes, which sustain varying atmospheres, providing optimal conditions for plants. Lizzy’s been experiencing déjà vu lately and is a little nervous about tomorrow’s First Expedition, a mission exploring the planet outside of the colony. The following morning, however, fellow cadets are sure First Expedition is still a week away, while Lizzy, it seems, is the only one who remembers yesterday. But there’s more: Lizzy recalls earlier tests, leading her to believe the colony’s doctors have been regularly wiping her memories. And she doesn’t merely have her own memories, but other cadets’ as well, including her best friend, Chloe. Wanting to know why the nefarious physicians are pilfering memories, Lizzy hides and recruits others, proving herself by relaying their private thoughts or pasts. She soon realizes the doctors are using a technique called Revisions, presumably to cover up a truth. But Lizzy’s keeping secrets, too, ranging from the missing cadets that everyone’s forgotten to something even bigger that, if it becomes common knowledge, could result in widespread panic. The story’s setting is ample and extensive, particularly the biomes, each with a color designation and nicknames for its workers (for example, yellow for the Bolos in the Tropical Rainforest Biome). But it’s the characters’ relatable predicaments that truly reinforce the plot. Lizzy, for one, struggles to convince friends to trust her while she doesn’t have much faith in anyone else. Galloway loads his tale with mysterious elements, like why Lizzy’s a hub for stolen memories, and wisely unveils them throughout the novel—instead of saving them all for the last few pages. There’s romance (reliving what was in cadet Noah Hartmann’s mind shows he has, or had, strong feelings for Lizzy) and minimized but sound melodrama (Lizzy keeps that previous tidbit from Chloe, who’s a Noah fan). The ending, meanwhile, satisfies on every level.
An indelible red-planet backdrop enhances an already rugged, tenacious story of a colony’s cadets learning to rely on one another.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9978558-2-1
Page Count: 410
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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