Carried along by the bumptious rollick of its language, this tale is full of sound and fury, signifying literally everything.
Odd-couple asteroid miners Quiver and Mic—a manufactured human and her artificial companion—explore the post-Earth universe in this surrealist SF tour de force.
Quiver is a “transitional prototype...gestated in a dynamic carbon envelope” back on the moon. Mostly human but for the small detail of her chemical incubation, she nevertheless feels an acute sense of alienation. Mic, her fully robot AI companion, has been programmed both in the science of interstellar “rare mineral reconnaissance” and in the art of soothing Quiver when she “flips her fuses.” Mic is also highly schooled in the cultural mores of the gone Earth, erased in “a cascade of catastrophes” which flung the remnants of the human race to Elsewhere, where they attempt to regroup. Via frequent data-dumps from Side Wheel, a virtual database of all things terrestrial, Mic has trained himself as a geisha, memorized the entire discography of “diva[s] from the distant past” like FKA twigs or Nicki Minaj, and developed a deeply erotic obsession with all things Al Pacino. Meanwhile, Quiver spends her time in The Lights—their spaceship’s version of Star Trek’s holodeck—immersed in a Jungian Eden that is co-inhabited by a mysterious redheaded woman. When an argument between the two miners escalates into name-calling (“ 'You forking self-righteous GIZMO!' [Quiver] shrieks….'You maddening THINGAMABOB' ”), Mic comes to a realization about his own selfhood. In the resulting existential backwash, the two badly bungle a rare mineral retrieval. At this, Mic and Quiver decide to go rogue and set a course for the planet Trafik, a fabled place of intergalactic free spirits where all their fantasies (even the Al Pacino ones) just may come true. What follows is a winsome space picaresque in which surreality piles upon surreality as the ill-matched soul mates navigate the unknown universe in their search for identity, belonging, and the sensual pleasures of the flesh, even if that flesh is actually machine. A longtime master of the extraordinary sentence, Ducornet has outdone herself here, blending SF’s penchant for invented jargon with her own queer linguistic egalitarianism in which all adjectives describe all nouns (even such unlikely couplings as “profiterole lasers”) in a primordial soup of possibility. This slender book captivates with its ferocious curiosity, quick wit, and ultimately tender generosity.
Carried along by the bumptious rollick of its language, this tale is full of sound and fury, signifying literally everything.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-56689-606-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
A heartbreaking book that staggers with both truth and beauty.
A coming-of-age story in which the main character is, literally, out of this world.
In Northeast Philadelphia, in the Earth year 1977, Adina Giorno is born to a woman destined to be a single mother. The baby is too small, and her mother, observing her under the hospital phototherapy lamp, thinks she looks “other than human. Plant or marine life, maybe. An orchid or otter. A shrimp.” One reason for this might be the lamp’s unearthly blue-green light, or the fact that the baby is early and the mother traumatized by her difficult birth. Another might be the fact that Adina is actually otherworldly, an alien life form from a planet 300,000 light-years away, sent to infiltrate human society and “take notes.” This Adina does assiduously all throughout her childhood and adolescence in 1980s and '90s Philadelphia, where she lives with her Earth mother in a poor, ethnically Italian neighborhood that is slowly sinking into the toxic ground on which it was built. The notes themselves—winsome observations on the nature of the creatures that surround her (animal, vegetable, and, most mysteriously, human)—are sent via a fax machine Adina’s Earth mother scavenges from the trash and sets up in her bedroom. Adina’s extraterrestrial superiors return encouragement via interstellar fax and offer occasional instruction through telepathic dreams that take place in their best approximation of what an Earth classroom might look like. As Adina grows and her circle of influence widens to include her tough but loving mother, her iconoclastic friend Toni and Toni’s film-buff brother Dominic, enemies, loves, false friends, and the other characters of a well-rounded Earth existence, Adina becomes more and more aware of how different she feels from her Earthling friends, even as her life follows the pattern of their joys and sorrows. A compelling, touching story that weds Bertino’s masterful eye for the poignant detail of the everyday with her equally virtuosic flair as a teller of the tallest kinds of tales—so tall, in this case, they are interplanetary.
A heartbreaking book that staggers with both truth and beauty.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780374109288
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A laugh-out-loud “why choose?” romance of intergalactic proportions.
What’s worse: to be killed by a lion or dropped on a strange planet and forced into an alien breeding program?
Dorothy Valentine had a happy career in wildlife biology, studying meerkats in their native environment and living on her own terms. That is, until a hungry lion decided to make her into lunchmeat. Abducted from Earth at the moment of her death—along with the lion who attacked her—Dory becomes Subject 4 in an alien research project. The goal: to extend the life of the Sankado species, whose females were left behind on their dying home planet. With "a few modifications," Dory is a prime candidate for Sankado breeding…except for the secret birth control implant in her arm. To make matters more complicated, she hooks up with two Sankado men, Sol and Lok, while under the influence of an alien love serum, becoming their Zhali—a mate for life. Luckily, they don’t mind sharing Dory or one another. Just when their three-way honeymoon is about to kick off, however, Lok’s old enemy rears his ugly head, putting all of their lives in peril. Lemming’s characterization really shines here. Sassy Dory, sensitive and whip-smart Sol, and the dominant, flirtatious Lok all feel fully realized, as do Toto and Intern—the lion who tried to eat Dory and the birdlike alien responsible for observing her. The sex scenes are spicy, if perhaps too few and far between, and the dialogue is snappy and realistic.
A laugh-out-loud “why choose?” romance of intergalactic proportions.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593818633
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
