Civilized, intellectual SF about society, politics, and empire building.
An isolated cluster of star systems, following decades of isolation, suddenly open their borders to share their idealistic philosophy and political system in Hawkins’ SF novel.
The story unfolds thousands of years in humanity’s far future. Teleportation-gateway technology (still not well understood) has spread humankind throughout the galaxy, spawning competing empires and conflicting ideologies—at times such entities might cooperate for a common interest (mainly profit), but otherwise they endlessly plot against each other. An isolated star cluster, the Archipelago, suddenly expels all outside corporate interests, deactivates its gates, and quarantines. After 50 years, an unorthodox invitation (“Well, it has been a while hasn’t it? How are you all? How are the kids?”) issues from the “Arc,” inviting delegates from other power blocs to tour the Archipelago’s new, eco-based utopian society (and, perhaps, re-establish trade relations). The selected diplomats, are, of course, also professional intelligence-gatherers, armed with nanotech spyware and poised to subvert whatever the Archipelago has achieved. Ren Markov, whose late parents originated from the Arc system, is the representative of the Core Planets Federation. Hard-drinking and disillusioned with his career in skullduggery on a decadent ruling planet, Ren is somewhat sympathetic to the Arc’s hopeful vision of sustainability but still mistrusts his hosts’ carefully choreographed propaganda and the dark hints of tyranny at the edges of their communelike social structure. Hawkins’ mature SF narrative (which, with its weary operative hero, may remind readers of the literary espionage novels of John Le Carré) is short on ray-gun blasts or romance but long on thoughtful debates on the nature of a fair society, ethical government, and planetary stewardship; the story is sadly persuasive in its depiction of Homo sapiens many millennia in the future still fighting one another out of greed and nationalism. Some dangling loose ends after the denouement point toward potential sequels, and readers will be eager for more visits to this universe.
Civilized, intellectual SF about society, politics, and empire building.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781399972512
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Gull Rock
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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