The imaginative worldbuilding and magic system overshadow the plot, and the reader may need a flowchart to track the cast,...
A group of secretive immortals are thrown into turmoil by the murder of one of their own in Brust and White's sequel to The Incrementalists (2013).
The Incrementalists possess mortal bodies but immortal minds—as long as they can find willing host bodies to keep inhabiting. Able to share their memories, they seek to make the world a better place, albeit in "incremental" fashion. In the first novel, one of their own committed suicide; this time, it's the murder of the oldest Incrementalist, Phil, that disrupts immortality-as-normal. Phil's fiancee, Ren, must investigate his killing with the help of a large cast: the handsome if bullheaded Oskar; meddling, haughty Irina; avuncular Jimmy; pragmatic doctor Kate, and others. Solving a murder should be easy when you can view the victim's memories—and easier still when he can be resurrected. But the Incrementalists can't agree on who Phil's new host should be...and solving his murder is complicated by conflicting agendas and old wounds dating back to before the Civil War. The investigation provides the loose thread of a plot on which the characters string flashbacks—and guilty ruminations on just how far is too far to go for their better world. With the book set against a timely backdrop of an Arizona torn apart by anti-immigration laws and sentiment, the Incrementalists seem set to clash with corrupt local police and nativist militias. Instead, salvation comes, not in cinematic violence but in moments of confessional soul-searching. Brust and White's bickering immortals are terribly human, granting vulnerability to the photogenically diverse cast.
The imaginative worldbuilding and magic system overshadow the plot, and the reader may need a flowchart to track the cast, but Brust and White offer a frequently poignant take on the question of whether power conveys authority.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8288-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.
This debut novel, the first of a projected trilogy, blends science fiction, fantasy, gothic chiller, and classic house-party mystery.
Gideon Nav, a foundling of mysterious antecedents, was not so much adopted as indentured by the Ninth House, a nearly extinct noble necromantic house. Trained to fight, she wants nothing more than to leave the place where everyone despises her and join the Cohort, the imperial military. But after her most recent escape attempt fails, she finally gets the opportunity to depart the planet. The heir and secret ruler of the Ninth House, the ruthless and prodigiously talented bone adept Harrowhark Nonagesimus, chooses Gideon to serve her as cavalier primary, a sworn bodyguard and aide de camp, when the undying Emperor summons Harrow to compete for a position as a Lyctor, an elite, near-immortal adviser. The decaying Canaan House on the planet of the absent Emperor holds dark secrets and deadly puzzles as well as a cheerfully enigmatic priest who provides only scant details about the nature of the competition...and at least one person dedicated to brutally slaughtering the competitors. Unsure of how to mix with the necromancers and cavaliers from the other Houses, Gideon must decide whom among them she can trust—and her doubts include her own necromancer, Harrow, whom she’s loathed since childhood. This intriguing genre stew works surprisingly well. The limited locations and narrow focus mean that the author doesn’t really have to explain how people not directly attached to a necromantic House or the military actually conduct daily life in the Empire; hopefully future installments will open up the author’s creative universe a bit more. The most interesting aspect of the novel turns out to be the prickly but intimate relationship between Gideon and Harrow, bound together by what appears at first to be simple hatred. But the challenges of Canaan House expose other layers, beginning with a peculiar but compelling mutual loyalty and continuing on to other, more complex feelings, ties, and shared fraught experiences.
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31319-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.
In the first volume of a trilogy, a fresh cataclysm besets a physically unstable world whose ruling society oppresses its most magically powerful inhabitants.
The continent ironically known as the Stillness is riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and periodically suffers from Seasons, civilization-destroying tectonic catastrophes. It’s also occupied by a small population of orogenes, people with the ability to sense and manipulate thermal and kinetic energy. They can quiet earthquakes and quench volcanoes…but also touch them off. While they’re necessary, they’re also feared and frequently lynched. The “lucky” ones are recruited by the Fulcrum, where the brutal training hones their powers in the service of the Empire. The tragic trap of the orogene's life is told through three linked narratives (the link is obvious fairly quickly): Damaya, a fierce, ambitious girl new to the Fulcrum; Syenite, an angry young woman ordered to breed with her bitter and frighteningly powerful mentor and who stumbles across secrets her masters never intended her to know; and Essun, searching for the husband who murdered her young son and ran away with her daughter mere hours before a Season tore a fiery rift across the Stillness. Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun, 2012, etc.) is utterly unflinching; she tackles racial and social politics which have obvious echoes in our own world while chronicling the painfully intimate struggle between the desire to survive at all costs and the need to maintain one’s personal integrity. Beneath the story’s fantastic trappings are incredibly real people who undergo intense, sadly believable pain.
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-22929-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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