A witty and captivating perspective from a famous fictional character.
In this satire, the Minotaur of Greek mythology tells his unusual and bloody life story.
This first-person account comes from the Minotaur, named Asterion, who’s speaking to the new 21st-century arrivals to Hades. In the Middle Realm (aka Earth), he is born to Queen Pasiphaë and a white bull intended for sacrifice. As Asterion’s mother dies giving birth, her husband, Minos, becomes the king of Crete. Though Minos sends servants to kill Asterion, the young Minotaur survives and in time meets his siblings. But ultimately, Minos puts Asterion in a cage and subsequently shuts him away in a labyrinth. Minos intermittently sends 14 virgins—seven boys and seven girls—to the labyrinth as sacrifices. Though Asterion boasts to his listeners that he’s the greatest of all serial killers, he also stresses he had to murder humans to stay alive. And while he engages in sexual acts with and even grows fond of some of those humans, he invariably kills and eats nearly everyone. Once Asterion meets his own inevitable death, he lands in hell, where he is reunited with and learns the fates of individuals he knew while he was alive. Shachtman’s amusing tale is predominantly tongue-in-cheek. The humor is unsurprisingly dark once inside the labyrinth, though scenes of sex and violent death are never excessively graphic. Much of the comedy stems from Asterion’s striking narration, as he’s prone to alliteration and contemporary phrases or references. He, for example, says of Crete’s virgins (and potential sacrifices) that none of them want “to win this version of Athenian Idol.” Populating the intriguing story are numerous mythological figures, including Daedalus, the labyrinth’s creator, and his son, Icarus. Though several of these characters star in the Hades-set final act, the tale ends with a memorable denouement for the Minotaur.
A witty and captivating perspective from a famous fictional character. (author bio)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-948692-38-0
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Madville Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fun-to-read addition to the cyberpunk canon.
In a future where body hackers and bio-genetic juicers are at cross purposes, a brother mourning his baseball-playing sibling tries to even the odds.
Take the real-life biohacking aesthetics in self-described “future-y reporter” Kara Platoni’s We Have the Technology (2015) and the plethora of books about the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR (an acronym for extreme gene-modification technologies too complicated to explain in short order) and apply them to a weird and hopefully not prescient techno-thriller and you have a cocktail that’s one part William Gibson, one part Cory Doctorow, and a dash of generic but propulsive future noir. Our narrator, Kobo, is pretty much a bionic man with implants, new organs, and lots of cybernetic upgrades, none of which mean that much for his job as a scout for whatever Major League Baseball has morphed into. Living in the shadow of his adopted brother, JJ Zunz, the superjuiced star slugger for the “Monsanto Mets,” Kobo is doing his best. “Baseball was a nasty business,” he admits. “I told myself all the usual things. How it would be some other asshole doing the job if it wasn’t me.” When his brother dies on the field of some mysterious engineered illness, Kobo turns detective, diving into the dark ends of this future landscape to find a little truth. Like most cyberpunk that evolved over the past decades, it’s weird and sometimes gross and endlessly fascinating. In Michel’s version of the future, Neanderthals have been resurrected, cloning is routine, and playing a private dick gains all kinds of unwanted attention for Kobo, not least from Dereck T. Mouth, the malevolent owner of the Mets. Did we mention that Kobo owes millions in debt for his miraculous modifications to his medical-loan company, which badly wants its money back? It’s a dizzying world but catnip for cyberpunk fans. How do you navigate a world in which everyone is altered? In this scenario, everyone and everything might be Chekhov’s gun. Everybody duck.
A fun-to-read addition to the cyberpunk canon.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-62872-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans will love the second installment of this dark fantasy about very human characters beset by inhuman dangers.
When the world changes, will you change with it?
A boy who takes pleasure in causing pain meets a monster who can teach him to do much more. A Soulkeeper puts his reputation on the line to stop the abuse of soulless humans—while concealing his relationship with an "awakened" formerly soulless woman. A religious woman given unimaginable power over human souls by a monster struggles to determine right from wrong, faith from blasphemy. In a world where mountains walk, prayers can change the physical world, and magical creatures like talking rabbit-soldiers have awoken from a centurieslong slumber, no choice is simple. The Soulkeeper Devin has chosen to befriend creatures like the faery Tesmarie while his spellcasting brother-in-law, Tommy, believes the newly awakened magical creatures have as much right to the land as humans do. In a time when most humans are reacting with fear and anger to their changing world, seeing the world in shades of gray can be dangerous. Meanwhile, Devin’s sister, Adria, finds that her new powers are testing her faith and bringing up questions she’d rather not confront. As new magical threats to the human population arise, all of these characters will be pushed to their limits, and the decisions they make may determine the fate of humanity. Picking up where Soulkeeper (2019) left off, this second book in a planned trilogy raises the stakes for every character, complicating the moral choices they face. The plot rockets along from one magical battle to the next, but Dalglish deftly weaves in rich character development alongside all this action.
Fans will love the second installment of this dark fantasy about very human characters beset by inhuman dangers.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-41669-6
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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