A fascinating and riveting exploration of what the future may hold—for better or worse.
The second collection of Africanfuturism, speculative fiction, and mystical short stories by Nigerian author and engineer Talabi.
In this collection of 16 stories, mostly set in Nigeria, characters are faced with the problems and promises that arise in an ever-changing, technologically advancing world. Sometimes those challenges are smaller, as in “Debut,” when two AI nodes create a collaborative piece of art made for other AI. When they spread their art across global systems, other AI systems express their pleasure in ways that disrupt humanity’s daily lives. Some challenges are on a more significant scale, as in “Ganger,” in which climate refugees have no choice but to live in a tech billionaire’s domed city. Everything they do is managed, mitigated, and restricted by neural implants. Laide Haraya, determined to find a way out of her monotonous, meaningless existence, stumbles on a way to hide her mind inside a droid. Now that she can do what she wants without being detected, she must decide whether she’ll risk her freedom to help others find theirs. In other stories, the challenges are more personal. In “Performance Review,” employers remotely monitor employees’ brain activity, speech, and movement as well as use high-level surveillance during working hours; Nneka must choose between losing her job and taking company drugs to increase her (arbitrary) performance metrics. In “Saturday’s Song,” a woman seeks whoever sent an evil spirit to kill her partner. Doing so requires being permanently possessed by the lord of the chains—and deciding whether freedom lies in forgiveness or vengeance. Written with an emotional economy few storytellers can master, the tales are accessible even to those with no background in Nigeria or Africanfuturism. Talabi plays with narrative form; puts women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people front and center; and tackles complicated topics like suicide and domestic violence, all while looking for happiness, hope and meaning in an uncertain world.
A fascinating and riveting exploration of what the future may hold—for better or worse.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780756418830
Page Count: 320
Publisher: DAW
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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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