A thoroughly entertaining adventure with imaginative action and an appealing hero.
A human rebel leads a desperate attempt against alien overlords in Taylor’s debut SF novel.
In 2067, World War III laid waste to Earth’s ecosystem, and in 2084, extraterrestrials called the Xirfell conquered the planet. Now, in 2094, the Xirfell’s King Hebdith and his minions, including alien creatures gathered from other worlds, impose despotic rule on the surviving earthlings. Despite the aliens’ vast advantage in numbers and assets, a scrappy human resistance movement has organized itself. Thirty-year-old half-Anglo, half-Indigenous Aiden Tenten has been part of the rebellion since his days attending Australasian Academy, where he was recruited for three major qualities: “an outstanding brain, a stubborn spirit, and a determination to make a difference,” and also because of—or despite—his reckless confidence and craving for the spotlight. When an unknown source disclosed his affair with Ravene, the king’s half-human, half-Xirfell daughter, Aiden was expelled from the academy. Since then, he’s been a successful rebel operative, but he’s apparently been betrayed again. As he languishes in prison with a death sentence, the Xirfell question and torture him; the seductive Ravene even conducts one of the interrogation sessions. Nevertheless, he manages, with help from allies, to embarrass the regime by foiling the public execution of Leelack, a breathtaking mermaidlike creature who managed to infiltrate the Xirfell’s high council. Aiden also escapes and is tapped for a crucial mission in which he must disguise himself as an enormous alien enforcer, get close to the king, and assassinate him. He won’t have to do it alone, but the odds are against his little team—and the betrayer in the resistance is still at large.
Over the course of this novel, Taylor tempers his bleak, post-apocalyptic fictional world with Aiden’s energetic narration and darkly comic humor, as when Aiden, in his alien disguise, finds himself seduced again by the unwitting Ravene: “But, before you write me off as the feeblest—if possibly the sexiest—operative in rebel history,” he says, “I was also hatching a back-up plan.” The overall tone of the narrative recalls Nick Harkaway’s novel The Gone-Away World (2008), but it does so without ever feeling derivative. The action scenes are excitingly unpredictable, and they also have an emotional element, as brave, goodhearted characters face mortal danger from truly cruel and evil beings. Similarly, Taylor handles Aiden’s growth toward humble self-knowledge in a moving and believable manner; as self-centered as he’s been, he’s also been taking care to note the examples of others who’ve found true greatness—“that kernel deep inside, that immortal core” whose recognition “can merge, from all our separate selves, into the person we are meant to be.” His later mission gives him the chance to move past his restless desire for fame and become his truer self. The book is also a standout for its inventive array of alien species; for example, Pavlina Dafina Evangelija, a tiny and fuzzy “gromeline,” is an intelligent and fearless creature who provides essential help for the rebels’ mission.
A thoroughly entertaining adventure with imaginative action and an appealing hero.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-78965-097-6
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Unbound
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
All retreads should be this good.
If humans and aliens can’t learn to communicate, someone will die.
Industrialization has ravaged Earth, and the Concerns (i.e., corporations) that govern the planet are desperate for resources and locations to colonize. Everyone or everything must be of use to the Concerns, or they’ll be discarded. So the scientific team in orbit around Shroud, a moon with an extraordinary amount of electromagnetic radiation and what actually seems to be some form of life, is under a great deal of pressure from its bosses to produce profitable results that will allow the planetary system to be more efficiently mined for raw materials and made ready for colonization. Then an accident in space leads to part of the team crashing onto the surface of Shroud inside an explorer pod. Their desperate attempt to find a way to call for help that will get through the considerable electromagnetic interference sparks many fraught encounters with what appears to be roving crowds of eyeless monsters, but are actually aspects of a sophisticated, multibodied hive mind trying to figure out what exactly the pod is. The humans and the alien collective on Shroud have very different ideas about what a life form is, how communication and information retrieval should be conducted, and how to recognize sentience. These misunderstandings verge on the deadly and ultimately prove transformative to both parties. The plot of this novel, driven by a disaster that strands humans among dangerous aliens, concerns a repressive government whose strong resistance to an equitable first contact is met by potentially stronger resistance from the alien contactee(s). As such, it is more than a little reminiscent of the author’s Hugo-nominated Alien Clay (2024), even if the government and the alien are quite different. While it reads like a meditation on the same theme, especially in the relevance of its socioeconomic and political milieu to contemporary circumstances, it is also well crafted and full of tense moments, building up to an emotional gut punch.
All retreads should be this good.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780316579025
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.
Having survived a disastrous deep space mission in 2038, three asteroid miners plan a return to their abandoned ship to save two colleagues who were left behind.
Though bankrolled through a crooked money laundering scheme, their original project promised to put in place a program to reduce the CO2 levels on Earth, ease global warming, and pave the way for the future. The rescue mission, itself unsanctioned, doesn't have a much better chance of succeeding. All manner of technical mishaps, unplanned-for dangers, and cutthroat competition for the precious resources from the asteroid await the three miners. One of them has cancer. The international community opposes the mission, with China, Russia, and the United States sending questionable "observers" to the new space station that gets built north of the moon for the expedition. And then there is Space Titan Jack Macy, a rogue billionaire threatening to grab the riches. (As one character says, "It's a free universe.") Suarez's basic story is a good one, with tense moments, cool robot surrogates, and virtual reality visions. But too much of the novel consists of long, sometimes bloated stretches of technical description, discussions of newfangled financing for "off-world" projects, and at least one unneeded backstory. So little actually happens that fixing the station's faulty plumbing becomes a significant plot point. For those who want to know everything about "silicon photovoltaics" and "orthostatic intolerance," Suarez's latest SF saga will be right up their alley. But for those itching for less talk and more action, the book's many pages of setup become wearing.
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-18363-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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