A tense read with an impressive reveal and an unpredictable conclusion.
This thought-provoking SF novel by author Nedeau painstakingly details the fragility of identity.
Darien Mamon is spoiled rich kid who’s had to find his own way after his parents’ deaths in an accident. After he was expelled from college in Miami for cheating, Darien scraped by with a series of badly paying coding jobs; then he was diagnosed with cancer, and its treatment left him in a deep, deep hole financially. That’s why the job offer from MemorSingular was a godsend. He’s now employed as a grunt at the MemorSingular memory-storage facility in Tucson, Arizona, working in a converted missile silo, and he works with the company’s renowned Dr. Hollister as the subject of cutting-edge memory experiments. But the experiments have a side effect: Darien begins having memories that are unfamiliar but also feel very real, and when he finds out the reason for the strange recollections, it comes as a shock—although it also explains why Hollister has been trying to eliminate Darien’s fear of heights. To escape his fate at Hollister’s hands, Darien enlists the help of Nancy, his ex-girlfriend's best friend who hates him, and her fellow rebels at South Miami Technical College. Over the course of this thriller, Nedeau slickly crafts a sinister twist on the reason why people’s memories blur as they age. The author plants the seed for the huge plot twist early on, then slyly veers away from it, making the reader think that Darien is simply suffering from some kind of mental breakdown. Nedeau also accomplishes the surprising feat of making the unpleasant protagonist likable by novel’s end; Darien is shown to mature as he learns that he’s not the only victim of the conspiracy at the heart of the story. The supporting cast members aren’t as nuanced as the main character, but they do play their roles well in the suspenseful narrative.
A tense read with an impressive reveal and an unpredictable conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-953305-01-5
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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