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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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