A dense, multifaceted story that will appeal to readers looking for a futuristic blend of sci-fi and mythology.
Set 1,000 years in the future, this post-apocalyptic tale predicts that a sentient, sapient computer will eventually save us from the malaise of day-to-day existence.
Wemyss immerses readers in a near-dystopian future in which mankind has ultimately succumbed to the seduction of Metaverse—a fully tactile virtual-reality experience. Life centers have shifted from Earth to the lunar surface, where a new Union of “gods” is charged with maintaining order. Mankind’s physical needs are served by Zee Prime, an artificial, omniscient intelligence, and individuals are essentially free to do whatever they can imagine—so long as they do no harm to others. Molecular engineering allows goods to be created at will, batteries control one’s metabolism, dragons are considered the perfect life form, and karma is the currency of the realm. Hurtful or reckless behavior is punished by karma loss and eventual “liquid” imprisonment. A council of greater gods oversees intelligent life, while laws are enforced by Conservator police who battle threats to humanity. Among the characters drawn from mythology, many are richly portrayed, each with surprising strengths and weaknesses. Ruler Thor’s granddaughter, Mote, recklessly flouts laws and is admonished by Hachiman, the chief Conservator. Considered a wizard, computer hacker Brittany stores commands that control the “fog” to create whatever humans materially desire. While imaginative and well-written, the ponderous story ambitiously reaches wide and far—sometimes too far. With such a vast mix of cultures, mythologies and advanced technologies, Wemyss might have served readers better if the story had begun with the information found in the appendix called Recovered Data, which would have more efficiently brought readers up to speed. Elsewhere, the story occasionally wanders into the mundane, as when the dog Zeus “humps” clubbers while they dance or when Ren and Britz talk food: “Vegan, Ren. I don’t eat meat or dairy.” Though Wemyss is a skilled, imaginative writer, the book lacks a strong story arc, and it’s often difficult to connect to the characters, who, for the most part, tend to be unsympathetic.
A dense, multifaceted story that will appeal to readers looking for a futuristic blend of sci-fi and mythology.Pub Date: May 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615816722
Page Count: 522
Publisher: Fractal Moon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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