Intelligent in its technical details, but also refined and delightfully complex in its storytelling.
In this scientific thriller (Everything’s Relative: And Other Fables from Science and Technology, 2003, etc.) a laboratory in Texas working to harness fusion energy must deal with sabotage from a rival lab—or possibly someone closer to home.
When a Controlled Fusion Research Center (CFRC) demonstration publicly fails at sustaining fusion for energy, physicist Nathaniel Machuzak is appointed acting director, partially because during the test the current director was electrocuted. Nathaniel and his colleague Slava suspect sabotage from their European competitor, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)—both labs are in a race to convert fusion into usable energy. Rothman’s novel is filled with scientific discussions on everything from the equipment used to the different types of fusion, like cold or laser, complete with corresponding jargon. But Rothman turns all of it, even a convoluted conspiracy, into a diverting, worthwhile story. The terminology is adequately explained without pretension, largely thanks to T.J. D’Abro, a female cop Nathaniel hires to work security and investigate the sabotage. She acts as both a potential romantic interest for the physicist and a repository for lay terms; for instance, she equates a pool break shot with particle accelerators. Often, the story alternates between past and present tense, sometimes in the same scene, which can be disorienting. The result is something that can read like an online game in play: “At this point Nathaniel feels blocked and remains silent”—fitting, since the cybertaunting mole might be hiding inside avatars within a roleplaying game called “The Real World.” Nathaniel falls prey to bouts of paranoia—he only seems to trust Slava and T.J.—but he seems right, since the shiftiest characters tend to be indisputably villainous: Cyrus, the previous director, who had been monitoring CFRC employees’ Internet usage; Balard, the ITER director, with obvious animosity toward all things CFRC; Senator Whitman, who openly challenges the financial strategy at Fusion Center; and Moravec, the GlobeTex chief executive officer and CFRC’s principal investor, whose limited, virtual appearances in “The Real World”—both as a male and female—suggest androgyny and omniscience. When the pervasive threat of sabotage insinuates itself into the ranks, even Nathaniel and Slava are not immune to allegations.
Intelligent in its technical details, but also refined and delightfully complex in its storytelling.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 411
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable, eloquently told tale.
Sutherland’s (Windsong, 2008) contemporary novel takes readers to the small, fictional Australian town of Trundle, offering a peek at the lives of its residents over the course of a year.
Grown sisters Ronnie and Marie have returned to their family home in Trundle, each of them recovering from a personal heartbreak. They’re not sure what to make of their troublesome neighbors, the Lals, who have built a large, modern house next door. The sisters and the Lals are at the core of the story, but Sutherland expertly weaves the lives of various residents into a rich tapestry. Trundle possesses many elements found in any small town: mom-and-pop shops, a struggling economy and a colorful cast of characters. What sets it apart from other towns is a place called Pelican, a commune founded in the 1980s on the outskirts of town. Marie, a former resident who left Pelican under a cloud of disgrace, returns to find she is welcome in the community; burned out from work, Ronnie finds herself restored by her stay there. Meanwhile, the grieving Mr. Lal sees Pelican as the perfect spot to build his own version of the Taj Mahal in tribute to his deceased wife, and his son, Vijay, struggles to find himself and the meaning of life. The story shifts perspective, often jumping among the central protagonists and various Trundle figures, giving readers an intimate view of the town. But well-defined, realistically drawn characters enable readers to easily follow these shifts in perspective. In spite of occasional scandals and disturbing events, Sutherland’s novel is, at heart, a quiet story of ordinary people dealing with everyday problems. Her graceful descriptions—“Through the open window flowed a deep and restful stillness punctuated by the chime of birds and the tolling of frogs”—bring to life both the landscape and the people who inhabit it.
An enjoyable, eloquently told tale.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-1426904394
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Provides the type of engrossing hodgepodge of memoir, philosophy, literary theory and metaphysics growing more...
What if reams of our conventional knowledge are just flat-out wrong—what if, for instance, the division between “perceiver” and “perceived” is erroneous?
Peace theorizes about the nature of human existence and how we interact with our environment. Offering argument as well as description, Peace posits that the prevailing mode of seeing the self as “separate” from what it seen, as well as from others, is unproductive and wrongheaded. Touching on his work with the disabled, he recounts his own life experience, mixing personal anecdotes with excerpts from the writings of American poets Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings and Emily Dickinson, as well as the British poets T. S. Eliot and John Keats. The poets serve as de facto guides through this book, as Peace looks to them to provide examples of the kind of consciousness he means to exalt: one where a sense of the self as an entity divorced from the rest of reality is overcome. The effects of this practice, Peace states, will benefit not just humankind, but the entire earth. His scope ranges from the perspective of the individual to the universe itself. At points, his reasoning becomes lost in insufficiently defined terminology or in the abstract nature of its own ideas. Sometimes, it’s unclear whose ideas are whose: “Without consciousness, there is no ‘time’ ” is essentially a paraphrase of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Likewise, Peace’s discussions of perception in relation to the self might have benefited from an examination of the philosophical literature around that topic. There are platitudes, but there are also real insights, as well as a tone that indicates a passionate but tempered candidness. Though the collection as a whole seems elliptical, and at times repetitive, it’s by and large an intelligent project that aims to explore its subject matter outside of the confines of genre boundaries. It is at once an original statement and a bibliography of sources for further reading. Peace’s treatise, with its aggressive tone and pace, will not be for everyone. But this may be a strength, not a limitation.
Provides the type of engrossing hodgepodge of memoir, philosophy, literary theory and metaphysics growing more endangered—and perhaps more valuable—in book culture every day.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 391
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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