prioress, refusing to involve the civil authorities, hires Guest, who’s just realized that the murders have been staged to mimic some of the seven deadly sins when another victim dies almost before his eyes. The very short list of suspects includes the one-armed caretaker and the priest Father Holbrok. Limited in what he and Jack Tucker, his devoted longtime apprentice, can accomplish, Guest sends for Philippa Walcote, the woman he loves, who’s married to another man, and her son, whose looks identify him as Guest’s. Beneath the priory’s calm surface they discover a seething mass of jealousy and deceit that will eventually lead to a killer. But it’s the arrival of Henry that changes Guest’s life forever. Readers who have followed Guest through 14 mysteries will be sad to see him go but pleased with his ultimate fate.
do. With women constantly thinking about their menstrual cycles and nongendered people referred to as “it,” the early part of this disjointed book is one yeasty, moist, hot mess. The second half gets considerably better after the aliens arrive and Rachel gets to make more of her own decisions, but she is still often along for the ride rather than influencing events. If she took more agency, perhaps Benford could be forgiven for the first half of the book, but the way he uses rape as a plot point, dissects the physical and intellectual prowess of Rachel’s Jewish ancestors, and consistently dehumanizes or vilifies anyone who doesn’t conform to gender stereotypes doesn’t leave much room for later graciousness. Benford may have been trying to twist this SETI tale into a story that includes themes of gender and consent, but he didn’t do it justice. The underlying premise is fascinating but not worth the initial eye-rolling slog.
science fiction and fantasy
NOOR
Okorafor, Nnedi DAW/Berkley (224 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 9, 2021 978-0-756416-09-6 Okorafor has defined Africanfuturism, once and for all, in this tale of scapegoats and revolutionaries. All Nigeria has seen the videos—the Igbo cyborg killing five men in the market, the Fulani terrorist shooting a villager in cold blood—but few know what happened to drive the two killers into the Sahel Desert. AO and DNA killed in self-defense: She to protect herself from a lynch mob that demonized her technologically advanced prosthetics, he to save his cattle from villagers who mistook him for a terrorist. Thrust together when their paths cross while on the lam, AO and DNA set their sights on the one place they hope no one will look: a secret community of outcasts living in seclusion at the heart of the giant Red Eye storm. Okorafor grounds AO and DNA’s world as an extension of our own, a world in which William Kamkwamba, Greta Thunberg, and O.J. Simpson remain household names and in which the personal is still very much political. Thanks, in part, to that grounding, it’s nigh impossible to read about Ultimate Corp—the massive company that has monopolized Nigeria’s agriculture and technology—without thinking of the real-life corporations that control similar spheres in our own time. AO’s and DNA’s experiences in their Ultimate Corp–saturated home settlements stand in stark contrast to life inside the stormy Hour Glass, where “non-Issues”—that is, non-Nigerians—live together in borderless harmony. That Ultimate Corp manufactured the means of its own demise brings a hopeful note to what could have been a depressing and agitating story. A searing techno-magical indictment of capitalism from one of the strongest voices in fiction.
SHADOWS OF ETERNITY
Benford, Gregory Saga/Simon & Schuster (496 pp.) $27.99 | Oct. 19, 2021 978-1-5344-4362-4 To save humanity from extinction and obscurity, Rachel Cohen, a trainee at the moon-based SETI Library, interprets alien messages sent across galaxies and eons. The SETI Librarians are the gatekeepers and curators of data alien cultures have set adrift in space, often millions of years ago, in hopes other intelligent life would find them. Some of these messages are Artificials—sentient AIs who must be convinced to share their vast knowledge. Rachel is particularly good at the task, which requires full-body immersion in pods that allow the Artificials to share their data using all available human sensory inputs. Working on her first Message, Rachel is raped by the AI in exchange for important information, which doesn’t seem to bother anyone but her, and that only slightly. After this great success, she moves on to other Messages, and her body and mind are once again used against her will. Eventually she finds herself ambassador to an alien race, but this time the aliens have come in person—and they’re asking for Rachel. If she plays her part, humanity may unlock the key to interstellar travel. The engaging premise is obscured for the first half of the book by pandering and outdated stereotypes. It reads like the author decided to throw in some concepts like feminism and gender fluidity without ever speaking to actual women or queer people, who don’t use the words yeasty and moist nearly as often as he seems to think they 36
|
15 october 2021
|
fiction
|
kirkus.com
|
