A lively but uneven SF tale with a strong premise.
A woman’s life—and mind—gets torn apart in the aftermath of an interplanetary war in this SF novel.
Thirty cycles after the end of the Caderyn War, Krissa is a woman whose life is one of sensible, daily routines on Roon, her home planet. Her activities include participating in martial arts training with her staff, taking her pills, reading books, and going to work at the Great Library. Now in her 60s, Krissa is about to retire. She is also getting a new roommate—a young nurse named Jo—to share her tidy apartment. There is plenty to look forward to except for the fact that Krissa’s comfortable schedule is sometimes shattered by unexpected, unwelcome mood swings and bouts of depression as well as by fragmented memories of a different life that could not possibly be hers. All of this makes her relationship with her new roommate difficult. But soon Jo realizes that there is more to Krissa than meets the eye. Krissa has unparalleled fighting skills, and when she sings, miraculous things happen. Alder’s short novel starts out superbly, with a promising setup about the scars left from a ravaging war and an intriguing, obviously unreliable main character. The energetic story unfolds as it goes back and forth in time, showing Krissa in the present; portraying her 30 years before, soon after the war ended; and eventually going all the way back to the beginning of her life. But the mystery of her background is made clear to readers early on by the all-knowing story that follows different characters as they observe Krissa. This narrative choice, along with the focus on telling not showing and the sometimes superficial SF worldbuilding, unfortunately results in a detached, remote tale that will fail not only to engage readers, but also to live up to the full potential of its imaginative premise. This ultimately undermines the emotional payoff when Krissa discovers the startling truth about who she really is.
A lively but uneven SF tale with a strong premise.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-66321-163-7
Page Count: 216
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An epic space adventure.
A thief and a teleporter team up to save their former crew in the finale of Mihalik's Starlight's Shadow trilogy.
Lexi Bowen is one of the most accomplished recovery specialists—code for thief—in the galaxy. She's nervous about taking a contract that requires her to return to Valovia, home planet of the ruthless enemies she once fought as a soldier, but the payout is too enticing to decline. Once she arrives on Valovia, she is almost immediately cornered by the Empress Nepru’s private guards. Teleporter Nilo Shoren appears in the middle of the altercation and teleports her to safety. Lexi’s history with Nilo is complicated. They were both crew members on Starlight’s Shadow, but Lexi has never forgiven Nilo for luring her to what she thought was a date only for him to steal a job right out from under her. She can’t understand why Nilo would save her now, and she’s determined to escape Valovia on her own. Nilo convinces her to accept his help escaping the empress, but their plans change when they discover Starlight’s Shadow and its crew are missing. Lexi and Nilo suspect that their friends were heading for the planet Rodeni, trying to capture a fugitive, and they set a course to mount a rescue mission. Lexi is a likable, tough-as-nails character determined to make it on her own. The truth is that she suffers flashbacks and panic attacks from the war, and she is afraid to show her vulnerabilities to Nilo. Although she tries to convince herself that her attraction to Nilo isn’t serious, she finds it impossible to resist him. In order to be together, they must learn to trust and openly communicate with each other, whether on the battlefield or in the bedroom.
An epic space adventure.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780063051102
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
Punchy, plausible, and bittersweet; studded with zingers until the very last line.
The desperate logistics of planning for the apocalypse reach their climax in the conclusion to a space opera trilogy that began with The Collapsing Empire (2017) and The Consuming Fire (2018).
Time is running out for Cardenia Wu-Patrick, aka Grayland II, emperox of the planet-spanning Interdependency. As she struggles to come up with a plan to save the billions who will suffer and starve in the wake of the collapse of the Flow, the extradimensional network connecting the planets of her far-flung empire, her nemesis, Lady Nadashe Nohamapetan, continues to scheme against her. With the support of many of the noble houses—who plan to abandon their subjects while preserving themselves and their wealth in a flight to End, the only self-sufficient planet in the Interdependency—Nadashe now seeks the throne for herself. Meanwhile, Cardenia’s lover, the Flow physicist Lord Marce Claremont, attempts to devise a scientific solution to the Flow collapse, unaware that Cardenia is hiding vital data from him. And the clever but hot-tempered Lady Kiva Lagos attempts to spy on Nadashe in hopes of defusing the coup, but she may have gotten herself in too deep this time. Scalzi treads a delicate line here: He set out to chart an apocalypse, and a deus ex machina would be cheating. The book also serves as an acknowledgment that intelligence and good intentions are not an impregnable armor against venality and the pitiless laws of physics. (In addition to slowing down Scalzi's writing—something he acknowledges in an afterword—the current sociopolitical situation in the U.S. has clearly flavored the story.) Given those parameters, Scalzi plays fair while still offering his readers some hope. And even when depicting the direst situations, Scalzi’s work retains its snarky cheer.
Punchy, plausible, and bittersweet; studded with zingers until the very last line.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8916-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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