The latest installment in Forstchen's dystopian series will be best enjoyed by those who have read the first two books, One...
In the aftermath of an electromagnetic-pulse attack linked to Iran and North Korea that wiped out American cities and led to the installation of an oppressive, unconstitutional government, hard-core patriot John Matherson is called upon to lead the resistance.
The eastern half of the U.S. is "a twisted, burned-out, perverted wasteland." The ruling forces, having been thwarted in their efforts to conscript an oppressive Army of National Recovery, are on the verge of handing over large chunks of territory out west to China and Mexico. Matherson, based in a mountain community in the so-called "State of Carolina," must decide whether to trust his old friend and commanding officer Bob Scales. Once the most principled of leaders, Scales now is in charge of suppressing old-school patriots like Matherson in the name of assimilation. Matherson, who has overseen inspired efforts to restore technology in his community—amazingly, those old, cobwebbed computers still work—represents a threat to the status quo. Having suffered grievous personal losses in the nightmarish conflict, he is prepared to fight for the America he loves, even if that means abandoning his new wife, Makala, who's pregnant. Like its two predecessors in the Matherson series, this new novel entertainingly blends folksy and sophisticated, small-town nostalgia and sharp futurism. Ultimately, though there are many exciting scenes, this is less a post-apocalyptic thriller than a book of ideas: a thoughtfully rendered, richly detailed investigation into the "What if."
The latest installment in Forstchen's dystopian series will be best enjoyed by those who have read the first two books, One Second After (2009) and One Year After (2015). But with its agreeable protagonist and nicely drawn settings, the novel quickly draws us in.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7673-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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