A fitfully funny satire that mocks disruption culture while it questions the purpose of immortality.
In a near future where corporations have monetized the world, a trillionaire plots a depraved path to immortality.
The ever prolific Bing (The Curriculum, 2014, etc.), the nom de plume of the publicity chief of a well-known media empire, here turns his sharp voice to a dystopian satire about the monetization of immortality and the costs inherent to it. The book’s villain is particularly vile—127-year-old Arthur Vogel is Earth’s richest man and a Frankenstein’s monster of implants and other life-lengthening techniques. But time is running out, and money is no object to Artie, as demonstrated by his penchant for 3-D–printed body parts. His personal mad scientist, Dr. Bob, has developed a way to capture and migrate personalities into the cloud: “Attitudes. Memories. Sense of self. Life story. The whole person. If it goes right, you’ve created digital immortality.” But pervy Arthur wants the whole package, so to speak, so he’s wiped the mind of Gene, an innocent man intended to be his permanent vessel. After merging with Gene, Arthur also makes plans to wipe out “The Committee,” the ruling body that oversees all remaining commerce in a devastated United States. But Gene still has friends in “The Peaceable Kingdom,” an enclave of Pacific Coast freedom fighters dedicated to the destruction of digital culture. Once his friends kidnap Gene, they find they can suppress evil Arthur’s personality with lots of booze. While Gene tries to keep Arthur at bay, his friends make plans to wipe out the cloud with an electromagnetic pulse. The plot sounds serious, but Bing uses a light touch, biting mockery of Silicon Valley culture, and grotesque imagery to good effect. But while Arthur brings true villainy and The Peaceable Kingdom has some interesting members, good guy Gene remains a cipher who’s a bit hard to pin down.
A fitfully funny satire that mocks disruption culture while it questions the purpose of immortality.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1983-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
PROFILES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
