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Summary
Summary
"Imaginative and richly rendered . . . Sparks frames all of this in haunting, near-poetic detail, such that the readers can smell the toxic red sand and perhaps taste the blood. Recommended for people who crave fresh post-apocalypse chaos--because Sparks's post-apocalyptic chaos is pretty fresh, at that."--NK Jemisin, The New York Times
Powerful war machines of the far-future collide across a barren desert world in this post-apocalyptic debut novel from award-winning Australian author Cat Sparks.
Seventeen-year-old Star and her sister Nene are orphans, part of a thirteen-wagon caravan of nomadic traders living hard lives travelling the Sand Road. Their route cuts through a particularly dangerous and unforgiving section of the Dead Red Heart, a war-ravaged desert landscape plagued by rogue semi-sentient machinery and other monsters from a bygone age.
But when the caravan witnesses a relic-Angel satellite unexpectedly crash to Earth, a chain of events begins that sends Star on a journey far away from the life she once knew. Shanghaied upon the sandship Dogwatch, she is forced to cross the Obsidian Sea by Quarrel, an ancient Templar supersoldier. Eventually shipwrecked, Star will have no choice but to place her trust in both thieves and priestesses while coming to terms with the grim reality of her past--and the horror of her unfolding destiny--as the terrible secret her sister had been desperate to protect her from begins to unravel.
Meanwhile, something old and powerful has woken in the desert. A Lotus Blue, deadliest of all the ancient war machines. A warrior with plans of its own, far more significant than a fallen Angel. Plans that do not include the survival of humanity.
Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
Author Notes
Cat Sparks was born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia on September 11, 1965. Some of her novels include Chinaman's Bluff, Scarp, in The Bride Price, Beyond the Farthest Stone and Daughters of Battendown. She has won thirteen Ditmar Awards for writing, editing and artwork. She was the manager and editor of Agog! Press along with Rob Hood from 2002 to 2008. She produced ten anthologies of speculative fiction. She is the fiction editor of Cosmos Magazine.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Australian author Sparks's debut novel, set in a strange postapocalyptic world, is all middle with no beginning or end. Star is a child of the Sand Road who dreams of wealth and adventure in the port town of Fallow Heel. Quarrel is an ancient warrior who knows his current mission will be his last. Both are forced onto the Black Sea, not to seek their fortunes but to continue a war that most of the world thinks is over. Sparks demonstrates technical skill with prose, but the start of the book is a confusing jumble, fragmented by the introduction of several characters' points of view scattered over a variety of settings. The mood is relentlessly bleak. The protagonists lack agency, which leads to a feeling of prologue rather than resolution. A satisfying conclusion is impossible; the book ends with the feeling that a stage has been set, but the story is yet to come. That promise is the only hope Sparks offers in this relentlessly grim narrative. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A post-apocalyptic vision from Australia.Seventeen-year-old dreadlocked Star and her older sister, Nene, a medic and the closest thing she's got to a parent, are part of a nomadic group of travelers and traders enduring hard lives and journeys across the Sand Road, traversing a desert overrun with vestiges of rogue semi-sentient machinery and other monsters from a time and war long past. When their 13-wagon caravan witnesses a relic Angel satellite crash to Earth, a chain of events is set into motion that launches Star on a voyage far away from the familiar life she yearns to leavebut close to discovering a secret her sister has desperately tried to protect her from. As all of this takes place, an old and powerful entity has awoken in the desert: a Lotus Blue, the deadliest of all war machines of the past and a soldier with its own agenda. Star's journey crosses paths with various soldiers and survivors in this complex tale, and knowing whom to trust, including herself, may be the key to her survival. Sparks' debut is ambitious and, at times, convoluted. The worldbuilding is so detailed that language borders on repetitive and tedious, and the narrative sets up a daunting array of characters, but patient readers will find it ultimately rewarding. The epitome of a slow burn, with a drawn-out plot and leisurely pace, this jigsaw puzzle requires full attention to piece together. (Science fiction. 14 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
It has been many years since the end of the Lotus Wars that decimated modern life. So long, in fact, that the people struggling to survive the sandy, desolate ruins don't remember a time before their dystopian reality. The only beings who still remember are the centuries-old mecha-human warriors called Templars built to wage war as supersoldiers, left dormant without purpose, and hated by most as monsters. Because nobody remembers the old world, technology has become relatively obsolete and no plants grow in the poisonous red sand that now coats the Earth. Star, a teenage traveler, has grown accustomed to this lifestyle, but is shaken when satellites called Angels begin falling from the sky. Templars are beginning to walk again, and War Tankers have gone from rogue killing machines to synchronized units. Sparks creates an uneasy and painfully suspenseful atmosphere with this sudden technological awakening, sweeping Star up in the burgeoning chaos as a long-dormant power from the Lotus Wars stirs, bringing with it only death.--Colias, Rachel Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN THE ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE Weird West of Maurice Broaddus's BUFFALO SOLDIER (Tom Doherty, paper, $14.99), an ex-spy battles hunters determined to capture the terrifying weapon he's stolen. It's an exciting, if familiar, plot - but Broaddus shows little interest in predictable adventure narratives. Instead he packs this slim novella with alternate American history, fantastic technology and fatherson bonding, for a far more surprising and satisfying result. The setting is an America divided into three nations: Albion, where the Revolutionary War never happened and the slave trade never ended; the lands of the "Five Civilized Tribes," where American and Canadian First Nations have fortified to hold the West; and Tejas (basically, Texas). The ex-spy is Desmond Coke, a dapper gentleman from a free Jamaica. His stolen prize is a boy named Lij, the genetically engineered clone of the Rastafarian messiah Haile Selassie. Arrayed against him are the dehumanizing forces of laissez-faire capitalism, including the deadly telepathic Pinkerton agent known as Cayt Siringo. Cayt is a sympathetic antagonist, having been cruelly weaponized through applied racist pseudoscience, but she is utterly relentless, and she means to weaponize Lij in the same manner. It's the latest salvo in a Victorian-era technological cold war in which inhumane human experimentation is the bleeding edge. Shades of Henrietta Lacks and Tuskegee loom between every paragraph. Desmond's goal is simple yet poignant: to reach the Five Civilized Tribes, where he hopes to claim asylum and raise Lij as a son. Lij is one of the novella's few weak points; while his quasi-autistic presentation and relationship with Desmond are beautifully rendered, he has little agency in the story, and effectively functions as its damsel in distress. The story's prose is likewise awkward, sometimes slipping into didacticism and repetition. Possibly the editor got distracted by all the robot wolves, armored pistolwielding cyborgs and Obeah-based science - the reader certainly will, anyway. A wild, satisfying ride awaits. IN A FUTURE OF NIGHTMARISH climate change and rampant oligarchy, a small group of people live and work in an underground lab facility called the Needle, hoping to master something akin to faster-than-light travel: This is the concept behind PROOF OF CONCEPT (Tom Doherty, paper, $14.99), by Gwyneth Jones. Should they succeed, humankind has a chance of colonizing exoplanets too far to reach by means of conventional space travel. For one year, the Needle is to be sealed offto test the new technology. Then, however, members of the group begin mysteriously dying. It's leftto Kir, a young girl with a quantum artificial intelligence implanted in her brain, to muddle through what's happening. Muddling along with Kir will likely be many readers, because this densely written novella starts in medias res and only gets more obtuse. There's good stuffhere, certainly; this is classic "idea" science fiction, high concept and high tech, chock full of stufflike beyond-Standard-Model physics and four-dimensional spacetime. The difficulty lies in the fact that the novella is high-immersion as well. Acronyms abound, many of them without explanation or context, and since the point of view is tightly limited to Kir (who naturally doesn't bother to explain concepts that are second nature to her), the learning curve for this story never quite levels out. Compounding this problem are awkward characterizations, a lack of urgency and surprisingly old-fashioned worldbuilding whiffs. Society is ruled by unimaginatively named "MegaCorps," while citizens fret over Thought Crimes. At several points characters espouse beliefs straight out of old Zero Population Growth pamphlets. And while the story is set after the 23rd century, characters still clumsily struggle with the concept of non-binary gender and pronoun usage. Science fiction, it is often said, interrogates not the future but the present - and Jones's comfort with modern theoretical physics is noticeably offset by her discomfort with modern social sciences. The ideas here are powerful, but muted by the storytelling. Lovers of idea stories may enjoy investing the necessary time and concentration, however. TO COMPARE Cat Sparks's new novel, LOTUS BLUE (Talos, paper, $15.99), to the "Mad Max" films would be a disservice despite the obvious parallels: vehicle caravans roaming deserts, warlords and lawless violence everywhere, a few strongholds of near-civilization battened down against the encroachment of barbarism. Yet Sparks's post-apocalyptic wasteland is far more imaginative and richly rendered. More than mere warlords threaten the ragged survivors of this world. Rampant biotech and unchecked corporate greed have leftit littered with still-functioning weapons of immense destructive capability. A number of characters journey through this dying terrain, intent upon their own agendas - all of which are disrupted when a powerful sentient war machine awakens in the desert and promptly sets about making everything worse. The badlands are the draw here, from their "mechabeasts" and fortress cities to the Obsidian Sea where terrible weapons have blasted the earth. Sparks frames all of this in haunting, near-poetic detail, such that readers can smell the toxic red sand and perhaps taste the blood. There's an interesting mystery in the form of the protagonist, 17-year-old Star, who craves a better life and has a puzzling metal splinter growing from her arm. Apart from this splinter, however, the biggest mystery about Star is why Sparks has made her such a self-centered cliché; in this stark world, it's difficult to believe her sullenness could be a survival trait. Other denizens of the wasteland receive still less of Sparks's imaginative attention, even as they struggle against living storms, radiation and whalelike singing biomechanoid tankers. There's a lot going on here, but it's difficult to care about the people it's happening to. Nevertheless, recommended for people who crave fresh post-apocalyptic chaos - because Sparks's postapocalyptic chaos is pretty fresh, at that. "PANTHEONS WILL FIGHT and they will bicker. Such is the way of siblings. It's a small matter. Don't think too much of it." This is the point at which Rupert Wong - indentured servant of the 10 Chinese Hells, arbiter for undead spirits, boyfriend of a hungry ghost - seems to realize he's on his own in FOOD OF THE GODS (Abaddon, paper, $15), the delightful new novel by Cassandra Khaw. In Khaw's version of modern-day Kuala Lumpur, the supernatural is real, hungry and attempting to unionize. Every possible pantheon of gods exists right down to the ones conjured from fiction; they are potentially numberless and powered by human belief. There's a place among the numinous for the right kind of mortal, and Rupert makes a tentative, if ugly, living here and on the edges of Kuala Lumpur's underworld. Things become much uglier when the Dragon of the South hires Rupert to investigate his daughter's murder. This puts Rupert smack at the center of what might very well be a brewing war between the Chinese, Greek and other godly pantheons . . . most of which want a pound (at least) of Rupert's flesh. It's madcap, macabre and violently funny. And if the humor is occasionally clunky (as in Rupert's regrettable lapses into Buffyspeak), Khaw's metaphor-rich, sensual prose more than makes up for it. For the most part Rupert's voice works; he's explicitly talking to the presumed reader, the non-Malaysians consuming this Englishlanguage tale, and the constant breaking of the fourth wall enhances a mythic feel for this otherwise gritty tale. The more creative descriptions of gore, and the special guest appearance of one pantheon in particular, pull the tale somewhere into the interstitial space between urban fantasy and horror, but brave readers will be richly rewarded if they choose to follow. It's probably safe. N. K. JEMISIN won a 2016 Hugo Award for her novel "The Fifth Season." Her latest book is its sequel, "The Obelisk Gate." Her column on science fiction and fantasy appears six times a year.
Library Journal Review
On an Earth that has been ravaged by war and technology, traders travel by caravan across the Sand Road. Partially sentient machines and other monsters live in the desert, and humans struggle to survive. One particular caravan carries two orphaned sisters, Star and Nene. Nene has always tried to protect her younger sibling, and of course, 17-year-old Star loves and hates her for it. But Nene's protectiveness involves secrets that Star will soon discover, when a satellite crashes to Earth, separating her from Nene and forcing her on an unexpected journey that will bring her face to face with Lotus Blue. This ancient war machine is powerful, deadly, and now awake, ready to destroy the rest of humanity. VERDICT In the spirit of the Mad Max films, Australian author Spark's debut takes reader on a journey of the intersection of human and machine. Strong characters and a vivid desert landscape bring this postapocalyptic story to life.-KC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.