Future-phobic SF as a delivery system for enough philosophy to keep the School of Athens busy into the AI age.
In Diviacchi’s SF novel, in a highly regulated, high-tech future, a former soldier wrestles with morality and philosophical conundrums.
Society, after suffering various crises (including pandemics), has returned from the brink via a carefully controlled, male-dominated technocracy called the “SCS.” Only “Upper Sphere” elites have the right to easily marry, bear children, and serve useful functions as artists, planners, legislators, and the like. “Outcastes,” at the opposite end of the social spectrum, are simply housed, tolerated, and kept amused. Former soldier John Wilson—who was raised in reduced circumstances in embattled Chicago, distinguished himself in military service in a war against an Islamist empire, and was rewarded with a Harvard Law education—has a modest legal practice. But he secretly opposes the establishment’s foundations, particularly its religious aspects. Though he cooperates with SCS strictures on “pragmatic” grounds, he avoids opportunities for coveted class advancement, dwelling in a condo in a committed relationship with a sex robot. After Wilson transgresses an absurd tangle of laws by preventing a woman’s suicide on the waterfront, he’s summoned to a hearing to determine his suitability (the surveillance state has been monitoring him) for a dizzying Upper Sphere upgrade. The plotline—which is quite thin, though it strengthens in the third act—provides a framework for postulations, rants, classical allusions, arguments about the existence of God, and lengthy discussions of ethics, justice, altruism, love, and other heady subjects (the author has published numerous works, fiction and nonfiction, centered around the idea of adopting nihilism as a practical approach to life). Patient readers will ultimately be rewarded with an especially affecting conclusion, but first they must navigate the disassociated hero’s dense, often circular internal monologues and heady musings: “Struggle and doubt exist and with them Others exist, otherwise nothing exists. Without struggle and doubt, I would be one with the universe and disappear. I do not want to be one with the universe. I reject it as it rejects me.”
Future-phobic SF as a delivery system for enough philosophy to keep the School of Athens busy into the AI age.Pub Date: March 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798253917879
Page Count: 237
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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