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No place like home
REVIEWS BY GAVIN J. GRANT
By Patricia A. McKillip Ace, $22.95 288 pages ISBN 044101366X
Keith Brooke's Genetopia is a strange hybrid. For the most part it reads like a young adult novel (in the vein of John Christopher's Tripod novels) until around two-thirds of the way through when there is a brutal and bloody "purging," an attempt at genocide. However, that's not to say this isn't a page-turner full of up-to-the minute ideas and explorations of genetic viruses and infections. If this is our Earth, it is a post-apocalyptic future where most of history, science—except for the clans' knowledge of bio- and nanotechnology—and gender equality have long been forgotten. Flint is a member of the clan Treco. His father is a violent, overbearing man who uses his fists to take out his impatience on those around him. Flint has often taken the brunt of his father's outbursts, sometimes to protect his sister, Amber. Their father suspects—with some cause—that he may not be Amber's father. When Amber disappears at a county fair, Flint realizes she may have been sold into slavery. There are many levels of humanity in Genetopia, but most people are not counted as "True" humans due to their genetic impurities. There are the Lost, whose DNA has been tampered with, and there are Mutts: humans who have been bred into loyal, near-animal states. Flint journeys into the wide world to look for Amber, learns a martial art and is injured in the war. Along the way the reader is shown a strange and very dark world with a few shards of hope to hold on to.
By Keith Brooke Pyr, $25 300 pages ISBN 1591023335
Paul Levinson's novel The Plot to Save Socrates is an old-fashioned science fiction adventure novel of time travel, academics and Greek philosophy. A document is discovered in which Socrates is offered a chance at escaping his famous death-by-hemlock. The dialogue intrigues a grad student who discovers a network of time machines and crafts a scheme to save one of the originators of Western philosophy. It's obvious that Levinson had a lot of fun and did a lot of research to write this book, and readers are sure to enjoy his take on the paradoxes of time travel.
By Paul Levinson Tor, $25.95 272 pages ISBN 0765305704 Gavin J. Grant runs Small Beer Press in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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The contemporary setting of Patricia A. McKillip's new novel, Solstice Wood, is a change of pace for this World Fantasy Award-winning author. Still, despite its present-day backdrop, the novel develops into a satisfying, old-fashioned gothic romance with a dark queen, a changeling, a circle of wise women and more than a few surprises. Sylvia Lynn has escaped her upstate New York family home to live a comfortable and controlled life as a bookshop owner in California. When her beloved and rather fey grandfather dies, she must return to the family home she left behind, Lynn Hall. Sylvia never knew her father and her mother died when she was a teenager, so she was partially raised by her grandparents. Her grief-stricken grandmother is still a formidable woman and insists that Sylvia stay for the reading of her grandfather's will. What Sylvia doesn't know is that her grandmother's Fiber Guild is actually a local coven of witches who for 100 years have kept the fairy world away with the power of their stitches. Sylvia's late grandfather was no party to the Fiber Guild, and although the fairy queen was not involved with his death, she uses it to try to change the relationship between the fairies and the humans. Meanwhile, Sylvia enjoys catching up with some of her friends but is horrified to hear that she will inherit Lynn Hall. She is afraid that a secret she has kept even from her grandmother will come out and that it will ruin everything her grandmother has held dear. Identity—and humanity—are fluid in Solstice Wood, as almost everyone worries about whether they truly fit in. McKillip describes small-town life well and captures the way Sylvia slips easily back into some parts of this world, but not others. Time has passed for both sides and some of what she knew is no longer true. If McKillip chooses to write more contemporary novels, readers will no doubt be happy to follow her down her new path and into the woods.
Human engineering
Turning back time