“The Hospital at the End of the World” is as much a warning to the world as it is a medical/mystery novel. Justin C. Key implies (or sometimes says boldly and unequivocally) that Artificial Intelligence presents a potential danger to humanity that we ignore at our own very real peril. Though the book deals specifically with the effects of a future AI on our medical systems and beliefs, we can see all too clearly the frightening effects that the technology poses for all of us.
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Author Douglas Preston’s latest novel, “Extinction,” fits comfortably into several genre spaces. It’s definitely a murder mystery, certainly a science fiction piece, and, eventually, absolutely a horror story which, incidentally, could quite easily be adapted as movie material.
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Newberry Medal winner Erin Entrada Kelly’s new middle grade novel, “The First State of Being,” is a delightful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking work which explores both the potential problems and fascinating possibilities of time travel. The novel features two young protagonists, both quite brilliant, and both of whom find themselves in situations and locations which reveal their mutual discomfort in new and unfamiliar surroundings.
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Charles Soule’s brilliant and thought-provoking novel, “The Endless Vessel,” is quite impossible to place squarely into any genre box. The novel is, in fact, at least three novels in one.
Plot number one is, perhaps, best labelled a unique combination of science-fiction, crime, and suspense. Its protagonist is Lily Barnes, a scientist whose mission is to solve the overwhelming universal problem of climate change and the resulting all-too-near destruction of our planet. She becomes aware of a mysterious small machine which, by itself, appears to have the capacity to solve the deadly effects of global warming. When the opportunity to examine the machine arises, she jumps at it, begins to analyze the strange instrument, drops it on the floor, thereby extensively damaging it, and promptly steals it with the hope that she can find a way to fix it. She is now a criminal, and her eerie adventure begins.
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Dean Koontz is a complex writer, so his books are complex as well, featuring the best of humanity as well as the worst. In “House at the End of the World,” Koontz continues his much repeated theme about a valiant individual fighting against the government and/or a science experiment gone wrong. Here we meet a woman, Katie, who has retreated from society because of a horrific wrong done to her. She and her peaceful way of life on her isolated island are threatened by a mysterious entity that escaped from a government laboratory which threatens not just Katie, but the world as we know it.
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Blake Crouch’s newest novel, “Upgrade,” doesn’t start with a bang but rather a slow, uphill journey that draws us in gradually. But don’t relax, because before Chapter 2 begins, the action ratchets up, and by the end of the second chapter, you’ll find you want to keep reading to find out what happens next — quickly. That level of excitement and wonder continues to the very last page. Crouch is a master at creating stories about fantastic events and the people who are affected by them. There are few real bad guys in this story; instead, there are characters who, because of their arrogance, believe they can save the world.
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In this action-packed middle grade scifi adventure, “Last Gate of the Emperor,” by Kwame Mbalia and Prince Joel Makonnen, a young adventurous boy with a mischievous streak a mile wide ditches school to play an augmented reality game to try to win money to make his and his uncle’s life a bit easier. He and his Uncle Moti live on Addis Prime, and they have moved often and struggled to survive on the many jobs that Uncle Moti can get. Yared doesn’t know what happened to his parents, and his uncle tells him stories about civilizations under attack and trains him in sword play and battle strategies. It’s certainly a strange life, and Yared is determined to make it better by winning big in the game.
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I must admit, this is the first novel by Ross Welford that I’ve read. It won’t be the last. Actually, the reason this book caught my eye was the “dog” in the title. And this dog, Mr. Mash, is the epitome of dogly dogs. He smells awful from nose (his rank breath) to tail (the gas he emits is constant and horrifying in its ability to spew outward). But he is also the epitome of dogs because he loves everyone, especially main character Georgie. Continue reading
No one writes better YA sci-fi than Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. Kaufman wrote the thrilling “The Unearthed” duology with Meagan Spooner and Kristoff wrote the very unique and dystopian “The Lifelike Trilogy.”
They wowed fans with the first book in this trilogy, and in “Aurora Burning,” the sequel to “Aurora Rising,” Kaufman and Kristoff take the story to new heights. They also leave readers on a cliffhanger that’s higher and more deadly than most cliffhanger endings. So if you hate cliffhangers, you might want to wait for the third book to come out and read them one right after another. Although maybe it’s better to be like the characters in this futuristic adventure and jump right in.
Margaret Peterson Haddix is truly the queen of series writing. It’s tough to write a second book in a series that has more than two books. You can’t write the ending, but there needs to be some kind of closure, and yet you have to make sure that the readers are involved enough to want to know what’s going to happen next. Haddix manages it all brilliantly.
David Sosnowski’s “Buzz Kill” is a brilliant novel, a stunning demonstration that all comedy is a skewed perception of tragedy. Sosnowski also presents extraordinary evidences of several inconvenient truths: (1) The moment we’re born, we start to die; (2) We and our babies, our creations, are ourselves the deadly viruses that lead us inexorably to our own destruction; and (3) The best-laid schemes, even the innocent ones, of mice and men and machines oft go awry. Not a very happy trio of truths, but all essentially inarguable.
If you like a quick read that will keep you in suspense until the last page, pick up “The Life Below” by Alexandra Monir. If you haven’t read the previous book, “The Final Six,” be sure to pick it up and read it first. You’ll find both books are hard to put down, as the protagonists struggle, first to make the cut to participate in an important space mission to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, and in the second novel, to actually get there alive.