Politicians confront environmental doom in this prophetic and altruistic tale about the near future.
A presidential adviser becomes stuck in quarantine after exposure to a deadly pathogen in this political novel.
Lucia Jackson is America’s first Hispanic female president, and 34-year-old Aleks Verdan works alongside her in the White House as an environmental adviser. The tale takes place five years in the future, and it is a time of great ecological crisis. Hurricanes and typhoons have hit hard, pollution is out of control, and epidemics have become the norm. After a debriefing, Aleks learns he was exposed to a disease a doctor brought back from Tunisia, and he is locked away in quarantine for six days. The pod he is kept in is light, efficient, and designed by a genius before IKEA picked up the manufacturing. Aside from the furniture and his antibacterial clothing, Aleks has nothing but his tablet. With minimal communication from his keepers, Aleks pores through the tablet’s files and videos, revisiting his time in government. The portrait of a planet in crisis is harrowing and is tempered by the deft leadership of President Jackson, whose political savvy leads the world toward some sort of healing. Missing his partner, Keon, and distressed to have to be offline for so long, Alek continues his journeys into the recent past, which show an American government that is concerned with the big picture and the greater good but one that makes difficult moral decisions about humanity. As the days wear on, it becomes clear to Aleks that the six-day quarantine may go on longer, leaving him increasingly fearful for not just the globe, but himself. Baer’s (Beggar’s Chicken, 2013) not-quite-dystopian tale offers a frightening premise, and the details about world political, environmental, and health problems are intricate and impressive. The author’s ability to identify difficulties and design solutions through his characters gives the story an almost hopeful feeling about this dreaded future, imperfect as these fixes may be. The book is necessarily digressive, and under those constraints, Baer has managed to fill it with action. But some of the foreign conferences and their endless meetings can become tedious. The distressing ending compensates for all, serving as an indictment of a society in which politics has become a personality contest.
Politicians confront environmental doom in this prophetic and altruistic tale about the near future.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5427-7016-3
Page Count: 382
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
For those who like their science fiction dense, monumental, and a bit overwrought.
Brown is back with Book 4 of his Red Rising series (Morning Star, 2016, etc.) and explores familiar themes of rebellion, revenge, and political instability.
This novel examines the ramifications and pitfalls of trying to build a new world out of the ashes of the old. The events here take place 10 years after the conclusion of Morning Star, which ended on a seemingly positive note. Darrow, aka Reaper, and his lover, Virginia au Augustus, aka Mustang, had vanquished the Golds, the elite ruling class, so hope was held out that a new order would arise. But in the new book it becomes clear that the concept of political order is tenuous at best, for Darrow’s first thoughts are on the forces of violence and chaos he has unleashed: “famines and genocide...piracy...terrorism, radiation sickness and disease...and the one hundred million lives lost in my [nuclear] war.” Readers familiar with the previous trilogy—and you'll have to be if you want to understand the current novel—will welcome a familiar cast of characters, including Mustang, Sevro (Darrow’s friend and fellow warrior), and Lysander (grandson of the Sovereign). Readers will also find familiarity in Brown’s idiosyncratic naming system (Cassius au Bellona, Octavia au Lune) and even in his vocabulary for cursing (“Goryhell,” “Bloodydamn,” “Slag that”). Brown introduces a number of new characters, including 18-year-old Lyria, a survivor of the initial Rising who gives a fresh perspective on the violence of the new war—and violence is indeed never far away from the world Brown creates. (He includes one particularly gruesome gladiatorial combat between Cassius and a host of enemies.) Brown imparts an epic quality to the events in part by his use of names. It’s impossible to ignore the weighty connotations of characters when they sport names like Bellerephon, Diomedes, Dido, and Apollonius.
For those who like their science fiction dense, monumental, and a bit overwrought.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-425-28591-6
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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