by S.M. Stirling ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2011
The eighth book in Stirling’s post-apocalyptic Novels of the Change series is a mostly tedious wheel-spinning installment, with repetitive plotting and labored prose.
Stirling (The High King of Montival, 2010, etc.) began the Change series with 2004’s Dies the Fire, in which all technology on Earth suddenly stops working, and people have to adapt. Now the world has been reconstituted under a feudalistic system, complete with lords, castles, knights, squires and the like, and magic and prophecies play increasingly important roles in the story. After questing for several novels, nominal protagonist Rudi Mackenzie has finally retrieved the mythical Sword of the Lady and is working to unite disparate factions as part of his new kingdom of Montival. Rudi, also known as Artos now that he has ascended to the role of High King, needs as many allies as he can get in order to face down the forces of the Church Universal and Triumphant, an evil organization that uses mind control to keep its subjects in line and is bent on conquering all of what was once North America. The novel follows dozens of characters as they maneuver things into place for the big showdown, but it’s almost all set-up for a climax that never arrives. Stirling spends paragraphs describing the clothing and weaponry of his characters in agonizing detail, while moving the plot along at a glacial pace. Although there are some fun nods to fantasy fandom (among them a faction of warriors who base their entire worldview on the Lord of the Rings novels), the writing is mostly deadly serious and dull. Stirling whips up a couple of lively set pieces, including the aforementioned Tolkien acolytes liberating the captive family of one of the opposition leaders, but the plodding boredom far outweighs the intermittent excitement. Dedicated followers of the series will likely want to see it through, but this installment doesn’t bode well for the books still to come.
Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-451-46415-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: ROC/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Cixin Liu ; translated by Ken Liu ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2014
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.
Strange and fascinating alien-contact yarn, the first of a trilogy from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, young physicist Ye Wenjie helplessly watches as fanatical Red Guards beat her father to death. She ends up in a remote re-education (i.e. forced labor) camp not far from an imposing, top secret military installation called Red Coast Base. Eventually, Ye comes to work at Red Coast as a lowly technician, but what really goes on there? Weapons research, certainly, but is it also listening for signals from space—maybe even signaling in return? Another thread picks up the story 40 years later, when nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao and thuggish but perceptive policeman Shi Qiang, summoned by a top-secret international (!) military commission, learn of a war so secret and mysterious that the military officers will give no details. Of more immediate concern is a series of inexplicable deaths, all prominent scientists, including the suicide of Yang Dong, the physicist daughter of Ye Wenjie; the scientists were involved with the shadowy group Frontiers of Science. Wang agrees to join the group and investigate and soon must confront events that seem to defy the laws of physics. He also logs on to a highly sophisticated virtual reality game called “Three Body,” set on a planet whose unpredictable and often deadly environment alternates between Stable times and Chaotic times. And he meets Ye Wenjie, rehabilitated and now a retired professor. Ye begins to tell Wang what happened more than 40 years ago. Jaw-dropping revelations build to a stunning conclusion. In concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu.
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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by Cixin Liu ; translated by Joel Martinsen
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by Cixin Liu ; translated by Joel Martinsen
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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