by Suzanne Leonhard ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2018
A grim and unrelenting tale in the best traditions of the dystopian genre.
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A debut novel sees a teenager learn to survive in a post-apocalyptic world rife with civil breakdowns and religious mania.
Sixteen-year-old Seraphina Donner lives in Roslyn, a small town close to Seattle. Sera’s mom has discovered religion. She is making Sera and her twin brother, David, attend a church wedding at the very time when, tragically, an earthquake destroys the building. Sera’s mother vanishes in a heavenly shaft of light. Sera and David survive, but their troubles are just beginning. Yellowstone has erupted, releasing enough ash to bring about a volcanic winter. Seattle is gone, dropped into the ocean. The people of Roslyn are left to fend for themselves. Sera’s grandfather is the town sheriff but not even he can keep order with food running out. Factions emerge. The Spathi, one group, features religious fanatics. The Skaggs, another, wants to cull the weak and the sick. As this would include David—who was born with dwarfism—Sera is forced to cast aside her abhorrence of guns. Instead, she finds a place in her grandfather’s citizen army, fighting both for survival and to retain her humanity. While David is being prickly, Sera has developed feelings for Micah Abrams, a former school bully who once made her brother’s life miserable. Where do her allegiances lie? And when humanitarian aid comes by way of a foreign military power, will it be the town’s salvation or the beginning of something far worse? In this gritty tale, Leonhard writes in the first person, past tense and paints a bleak picture of how even a small, tight-knit community might fall apart at the end of days. The nature of the catastrophe—a genuine scientific possibility rather than zombies or the like—adds a sobering dose of realism, as does the author’s commitment to having characters stay true to their natures. The plot is confrontational; the prose and dialogue are practical, as befits the story being told. Events unfold with a sense of inevitability (though with a few surprises), gaining momentum as they play out. Unfortunately, this first volume of a trilogy lacks a self-contained ending. Thus, readers will be left unsatisfied and a bit puzzled by the religious motif that comes increasingly to the fore.
A grim and unrelenting tale in the best traditions of the dystopian genre.Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9993922-3-2
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Kc Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Celeste Ng ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2022
Underscores that the stories we tell about our lives and those of others can change hearts, minds, and history.
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In a dystopian near future, art battles back against fear.
Ng’s first two novels—her arresting debut, Everything I Never Told You (2014), and devastating follow-up, Little Fires Everywhere (2017)—provided an insightful, empathetic perspective on America as it is. Her equally sensitive, nuanced, and vividly drawn latest effort, set in a dystopian near future in which Asian Americans are regarded with scorn and mistrust by the government and their neighbors, offers a frightening portrait of what it might become. The novel’s young protagonist, Bird, was 9 when his mother—without explanation—left him and his father; his father destroyed every sign of her. Now, when Bird is 12, a letter arrives. Because it is addressed to “Bird,” he knows it's from his mother. For three years, he has had to answer to his given name, Noah; repeat that he and his father no longer have anything to do with his mother; try not to attract attention; and endure classmates calling his mother a traitor. None of it makes sense to Bird until his one friend, Sadie, fills him in: His mother, the child of Chinese immigrants, wrote a poem that had improbably become a rallying cry for those protesting PACT—the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act—a law that had helped end the Crisis 10 years before, ushering in an era in which violent economic protests had become vanishingly rare, but fear and suspicion, especially for persons of Asian origin, reigned. One of the Pillars of PACT—“Protects children from environments espousing harmful views”—had been the pretext for Sadie’s removal from her parents, who had sought to expose PACT’s cruelties and, Bird begins to understand, had prompted his own mother’s decision to leave. His mother's letter launches him on an odyssey to locate her, to listen and to learn. From the very first page of this thoroughly engrossing and deeply moving novel, Bird’s story takes wing. Taut and terrifying, Ng’s cautionary tale transports us into an American tomorrow that is all too easy to imagine—and persuasively posits that the antidotes to fear and suspicion are empathy and love.
Underscores that the stories we tell about our lives and those of others can change hearts, minds, and history.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-49254-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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by Pierce Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 6, 2015
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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