Impressive and worthwhile, but even committed readers will be tempted to skim at times.
Final entry in the alternate-world Northland trilogy (Bronze Summer, 2012, etc.).
Once again, stunning worldbuilding is the order of the day. In 1315, Extelur, originally built thousands of years ago as a wall to hold back the encroaching seas, has expanded into a vast linear city housing the most powerful civilization in the world. To the east lies the Hattusan (Hittite) Empire; to the south, Carthage, having destroyed Rome in the Punic Wars, occupies North Africa and Iberia; the Mongols hold sway in Asia; in the Americas, three sprawling civilizations have arisen. As the story opens, old scholar Pyxeas studies the behavior of glaciers in Coldland (Greenland). He returns to Extelur with a young Inuit companion, Avatak, and bad news: The current bitterly cold weather is but a harbinger of a new Ice Age. But Pyxeas’ understanding of the forces and processes behind this is yet incomplete, so he plans to travel to Cathay to consult the scholars there, meanwhile warning Extelur’s fractious leaders of what is to come. Few, of course, believe him—until another heatless summer is rapidly followed by a winter of unprecedented ferocity. As Pyxeas and Avatak make their way to Cathay, they observe civilizations in the throes of collapse. The Hattusans, menaced by Scand and Rus hordes fleeing the north, make a fateful decision: uproot their entire empire and sail south to challenge Carthage for control of the agricultural wealth of Egypt. All this is brought to vibrant life in a series of fine character studies and interactions, even if the plotting is far less probable than the densely woven backdrop. The drawback is Baxter’s tendency to drench everything in detail, all too frequently slowing the narrative to a crawl.
Impressive and worthwhile, but even committed readers will be tempted to skim at times.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-451-24012-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: ROC/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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