A rewarding SF adventure on a particularly vivid alien world.
A human refugee colony on the planet Kamaria finds clues that a vile machine-creature race that conquered Earth has infiltrated this world as well.
In this SF sequel, Bruno continues the Song of Kamaria series that began with In the Orbit of Sirens (2020). Humanity fled a solar system conquered by the Undriel, a homegrown cyborg race that assimilates humanoids (rather like the Borg of the Star Trek series, but more insectoid in their augmentations). On the strange, distant world of Kamaria, a generation of Homo sapiens that built cities lives in an uneasy peace with the Natives, a birdlike species, some flightless, some not, called the Auk’nai, technologically adept yet prone to mysticism. The sudden slaughter of a formidable forest predator, held in esteem by many Auk’nai as a living god, presages dire clues pointing to the conclusion that the dreaded Undriel—or something with the race’s technology—have crossed the cosmos and landed on Kamaria. When a monstrous Auk’nai-like thing with biomechanical attributes kidnaps Cade and Nella Castus, the young adult children of hero pioneers Denton and Eliana Castus, a rescue expedition heads off into forbidden, eldritch realms and Lovecraft-ian caves, looking for answers. This volume is what the SF cognoscenti like to call a “planetary romance,” somewhat trickily defined as a story in which a striking world’s environment and culture drive and practically define the narrative. Indeed, the Auk’nai part of the tale fairly obviously reflects the fates of Native Americans and Indigenous peoples who were confronted with (and ruined by) European colonization/imperialism (“Humanity had a bad track record”). A complication here is that Kamaria’s biosphere includes tangible metaphysical elements—deities or the near equivalent, spirit forms, and other great whazzits—that come into play. Sometimes, these facets are thrilling (action and combat in the second half of the story come pretty much nonstop). Other times, the superpowers and otherworldly allies seem a little convenient, affecting the author’s well-hung cliffhangers (including an open ending). Or, as Denton notes, “anything is possible now.” Genre fans will be transfixed by the results and imagination at work and perhaps give additional points for a key character being deaf, something the Star Trek series only worked into one TV episode (after some persuasion, too).
A rewarding SF adventure on a particularly vivid alien world.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73464-706-8
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Tom Bruno Author
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning.
An intrepid teen encounters the dark secrets of the elite in her climate-ravaged world in this translated work from South Korea.
Sixteen-year-old Jeon Chobahm is shocked to learn that Goh Haeri, the beloved reality TV star who happens to be Chobahm’s look-alike, just died by suicide—and also that she’s being asked to become Haeri’s secret replacement. In their frozen, post-apocalyptic world, Chobahm, like everyone around her, leads a bleak life. She bundles up daily against the dangerous cold and toils in a power plant. But now she’ll live Haeri’s cushy life in Snowglobe, an exclusive, glass-dome-enclosed community, where the climate is mild, and the resident actors’ lives are broadcast as entertainment for those in the open world. As glamorous as life there may seem, however, Chobahm quickly learns that there’s a sinister underbelly: People are killed off when they’re no longer useful, and there’s something strange about Haeri’s family dynamics. As she meets a host of new companions, including Yi Bonwhe, the heir of Snowglobe’s founding family, Chobahm discovers a devastating secret and embarks on a risky plan to expose the truth. Climate change, societal inequity, and the ethics of escaping from our own lives by watching others’ are addressed in this intelligent, absorbing book. Chobahm is a complex character inhabiting a strongly developed world, and her compassion, ambition, outrage, and sorrow ring true.
Transporting and unputdownable; an appealing combination of deep and page-turning. (Dystopian. 12-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593484975
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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