The gods are cruel and capricious, and Lee spares no detail through 336 pages of soporific, tormented, occasionally...
Manufactured mythology, from the author of White as Snow (2000), etc.
Queen Hetsa's daughter by the Sun King, Akreon, is born with no feet, so she tells the king that the child died, and surreptitiously consigns the infant to the death god. Miraculously, the child survives Thon's merciless initiation rites and eventually learns to move on crutches. Later, after Akreon dies, Udrombis the Sun Consort poisons Hetsa and orders the child, a royal heir after all, returned to the palace. There, young Calistra glimpses her sun-bright brother Klyton, and falls in love. He, astonished by her beauty, reciprocates and orders that she be taught to walk, upon specially made silver feet. Glardor, the new Sun King, tends to his farming and ignores Klyton and his older brothers Amdysos and Pherox. Later, during a brief war against a neighboring land, Pherox dies in bizarre fashion—struck in the face by a hurled apple. Klyton and Amdysos both nurse ambitions to win the Great Race, a sacred chariot race conducted inside a mountain. Amdysos tricks Klyton and emerges first; as Klyton curses him, a gigantic eagle flies down and snatches Amdysos away. Glardor, stung by a bee, dies. His successor, Nexor, disgraces himself and is rejected by the gods. Klyton becomes Sun King and takes Calistra to wife, to the joy of both. Then Amdysos, horribly crippled and without memory, returns—just as his demented wife gives birth to a demon with exactly the same deformities as Amdysos. So it goes.
The gods are cruel and capricious, and Lee spares no detail through 336 pages of soporific, tormented, occasionally unintelligible prose.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2003
ISBN: 1-58567-207-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
First of a three-book series covering the world of remote tomorrows, the effectiveness of this first volume is curtailed by its attempt to cover more than a century in time with its many generations of characters. Psychohistorian Seldon senses the coming crash of the galactic empire, prepares a chosen corps of his best students to colonize a remote planet where war cannot impede his work. The story of this colony's survival and eventual command of the broken empire sustains the narrative which is- this time-better science than fiction.
Pub Date: Aug. 30, 1951
ISBN: 0553382578
Page Count: -
Publisher: Gnome Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1951
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Good characters, keen social commentary, and propulsive action sequences with a bit too much tech jargon.
An extreme gamer who has concocted a scheme to monetize his expertise gets into trouble navigating a virtual world that starts to intrude on his real life.
Following in the footsteps of Ernie Cline, who hit the geek gold mine with Ready Player One (2011), Ruff (Lovecraft Country, 2016, etc.) takes his shot at a near-future gaming world that’s more grounded than most virtual-reality universes but also more complex. Our main protagonist is John Chu, the founder of Sherpa, Inc., a consulting firm that guides new gamers through a variety of mostly VR–based video games. He has good partners in Jolene, a more mature African American gamer who won’t take any of his shit, and Anja, a brilliant young player whose permanent injury has left her on life support, albeit with thought-controlled access to the VR world. Unfortunately, he also has a nemesis in Darla Jean Covington, his virtual ex-girlfriend, who is clearly holding a grudge. The kicker comes when Chu is approached by a man named Smith on behalf of a pseudonymous client named Mr. Jones, who wishes to pay him an astonishing $100,000 per week for his exclusive services. Lurking in the background is Ms. Pang, an enigmatic Chinese woman who might be a spy. Soon Chu begins to suspect that his mysterious client is actually North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Fortunately, Chu has some backup from his mother, who’s a member of a secretive anti-terrorist task force called Zero Day, and an absent father who pulls his weight when he needs to. It’s a pretty good thriller, but it’s also very much a book for gamers by gamers. If acronyms like MMORPG, PvP, or PPML throw you for a loop, this might not be the ride for you. Gamers for life who can pry themselves off the controller will certainly dig this digital-era whodunit.
Good characters, keen social commentary, and propulsive action sequences with a bit too much tech jargon.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-285467-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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