Delivers sci-fi action while maintaining a highbrow, character-driven narrative.
In Diogenes’ sci-fi debut, a military drone pilot steps into a dystopian world to lead a murder investigation and clash with renegade robots.
On a casual weekend with potential love interest Anna, military agent Ray Alexander has to put himself back into work mode when robots arrive that have been reprogrammed to attack Anna and her uncle Cal. Before Ray has a chance to determine the robots’ specific target, he’s nearly killed by swarmers—small flying automatons that successfully murdered another drone pilot. Ray looks into identifying a person who fled the scene of the robot attack and is soon faced with more trouble when Anna disappears. The author permeates his story with delectable sci-fi bytes, like a peculiar time convention called “qhours,” each comprised of 10 90-second minutes, and Ray’s Panviewer headgear that allows for a panoramic “fullview.” The book further boasts stellar action, particularly the multiple swarmer assaults, as well as tech humor, including crash-landed, lucky-to-be-alive passengers complaining that they can’t access social networking; even Ray is upset that he has no time to peruse his backlog of emails. There’s a robust backdrop of inharmonious systems of government—the Constitutional Republic, for which Ray works, is set against the anti-freedom United Christian States and the Caliphate. Yet the novel’s most notable feature is its broad, fertile language; readers may want a dictionary handy, since uncommon words—“moue” and “pellucid,” for instance—appear in liberal doses. But the vocabulary, while certainly intelligent, occasionally has a dulling effect, as when Ray uses an aurally harsh word like “pulchritudinous” to compliment Anna’s beauty or in the frequent sex scenes between Anna and Ray (as well as Ray and fellow pilot Zinnia), which feature somewhat clinical descriptions: Ray “skillfully palpated all the plicae of her pudenda.” Their physical encounters have the same cold, detached feel as the virtual alternative. Still, it’s captivating following Ray’s exploits—he gets help from an old lover while finding a new lover and looking for his current lover—all the way to an ending that’s fearlessly unreserved.
Delivers sci-fi action while maintaining a highbrow, character-driven narrative.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492208235
Page Count: 442
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
