Vivid worldbuilding makes this sci-fi tale a strong series opener.
In this debut novel, a covert agent who’s supposed to stay unattached becomes involved in countering evil forces threatening a planet she’s come to love.
As undercover advance agent for a peaceful trade consortium, Marta Rowan, 22, has her usual mission, this time on Adalta, surveying and collecting samples. But from the first, little goes as planned. Marta’s usually effective empathic dampers break down; equipment fails; and most troublingly, her director wants to contravene prohibitions by interfering in local laws to permit trade in technology and advanced weapons. As part of her cover, Marta joins patrollers who ride the Karda, huge, beautiful creatures half hawk, half horse. On her travels with Sidhari, the Karda who selects her, Marta meets tall, graceful, arrogant Altan Me’Gerron and sparks fly—literally—when they touch, one of many strange occurrences and references Marta can’t understand. What, for example, does it mean that Readen, the eldest son of Restal Quadrant’s Guardian, was born without “talent”? Why is Restal so troubled by blight and fear? As for Readen, he’s nurturing twisted plans to gain corrupted power from a source thought to be long buried—schemes that will target Marta and gravely endanger Adalta. Bonded to Sidhari, drawn to Altan, and changed by Adalta, Marta finds herself at the center of a dangerous struggle for the soul of the planet. In this first installment of a sci-fi series, Nilson presents a fully lived-in, well-thought-out world. Adalta’s culture is a beguiling mix of medieval-ish through Victorian era technology, minus the coal smoke and plus some intriguing elemental magic, not to mention the magnificent Karda. Themes tend to repeat themselves, with characters slow to make realizations and some episodes described at perhaps unnecessary length. Readers who enjoy immersive detail may not mind, and when things do start to move along, the author deftly holds the audience’s interest with new developments, backstory, and deepening relationships. A few clichés hamper the storytelling, like a clearly beautiful heroine who doesn’t think she is and romance through mutual irritation, but these are minor missteps.
Vivid worldbuilding makes this sci-fi tale a strong series opener.Pub Date: July 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73227-290-3
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Karda
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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