A twisty alien-invasion actioner that’s front-loaded with emotion.
After aliens in battle armor destroy most of human civilization, a tough adolescent survivor finds hope and surprise allies thanks to her possession of a rare, working cellphone in this YA sci-fi novel.
Planet Earth was looted of most of its water by mysterious “crabs”—aliens (or alien robots) in plasma cannon battle suits resembling oversized crustaceans. In the process, billions of people died. Mankind did figure out ways to kill the crabs, but civilization still crumbled in decisive defeat. Now, in the parched wastelands around Milwaukee, where crabs still occasionally patrol, 16-year-old war orphan Yasmine stoically perseveres, bartering salvaged goods, including weapons, and reclaiming what water that remains from condensation, secret stashes, and even recycled urine. She also secretly maintains her late mother’s cellphone and its archived texts, photos, music, and handy camera by using a solar charger. After she manages an incredible one-on-one victory against a crab, she adjusts to being a member of a hardscrabble colony of fellow survivors. But then her phone starts receiving new messages. A caller named Trey tells Yasmine that he’s being held prisoner in the city by a human faction called the Monoliths—and he needs her help. Orion launches his Dry Earth series with some sci-fi tropes that aren’t exactly groundbreaking, but they do have suitable gravitas. The author spends much of the narrative developing Yasmine’s character as a hardened, adolescent loner who’s slowly acclimating to a makeshift community. Sharp readers may see the story’s big third-act twist coming from blocks away. Still, Orion effectively pours on the action, with Yasmine surviving firefights and collapsing buildings with no injuries—at least, none that are serious enough to keep her from the next battle. The author also tosses some plot twists and engaging concepts into the mayhem that will keep readers engaged. Unlike similar titles in the post-apocalyptic YA subgenre, there’s no romance in this installment—but then, this is only Book 1.
A twisty alien-invasion actioner that’s front-loaded with emotion.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 213
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
