A well-conceived parable of aging and love.
A woman attempts to find meaning in post-divorce life in this satirical, speculative novel.
At age 50, Harmony is feeling self-conscious about being too old, especially after her husband, Garth, leaves her for a younger woman. Though indistinguishable from a human, Harmony is actually a RealGirlz: a synthetic woman who was originally created “with an approximate physical age of sixteen” by a 3-D printer in order to serve as an unpaid sex worker for the Regal Corporation. She was released from that life by court order at age 20, but Garth still throws her sex-worker past at Harmony when he leaves. To add insult to injury, the same day Harmony receives her divorce papers, she also gets a notice about Compassionate Release, the program by which single women over 50 are encouraged to take advantage of an assisted suicide service. After Harmony makes a desperate, flailing pass at Lydia, her trans best friend who was also abandoned by her partner, the two women try to figure out how to proceed in life as middle-aged singles. It’s a world of devious men and frightening statistics. But is happiness really possible for a woman in Harmony’s situation, or should she just accept the sweet embrace of death? Mann’s prose is crisp and clever as she paints a portrait of a future just slightly (and yet believably) advanced from the audience’s present. The premise is rife with humor. When Harmony attends the RealGirlz 50th Birthday Bash, one of her synthetic sisters observes: “We may be 50 biologically, but we’re just 34 chronologically. Have you thought about that?” While the book takes a while to find its voice—the first few chapters are oddly serious for what turns out to be mostly a comedic work—the author has plenty to say about how much society defines women primarily by their relationships with men. (Though there’s always alternate fulfillment: “Living for the children, I suppose,” Harmony’s Compassionate Release rep defines it. “If you have them.”) Even with the speculative elements, Mann hews closely to her characters’ interior lives, giving the story some emotional heft—and readers a lot to think about.
A well-conceived parable of aging and love.Pub Date: March 18, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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