N. Lee WoodRecensioni

F/SF

2.5. Good writing and a page-turner, but this near-future SF thriller set in the Middle East felt shallow and dated 20 years after its publication. Which is a shame - it's not every science fiction novel that follows a plucky, sarcastic Arab-American foreign correspondent and a military cyborg with a heart of gold.

Guter poastapokalyptischer SF mit einigen für meinen Geschmack zu brutalen Szenen.

This book was published in 1996 and was nominated for an Arthur C. Clarke award in 1997. That's an indication of how good this debut novel is.

Kay Bee Suleiman is a journalist who rose to fame covering the war in Khuruchabja, an Arab nation with few natural resources. Kay Bee describes herself as "homely as a mud fence" when she dresses as a woman but dressed as a man her features were judged as distinguished. In Khuruchabja she had to pretend to be a man since women could not hold jobs. Covering that war was stressful so Kay Bee was happy to go back to work for the Global Broadcasting Network (GBN) behind the scenes, giving feed-ins for the on air personalities. Ten years later, she is requested/ordered to return to Khuruchabja to accompany a government asset who is an artificially intelligent and enhanced humanoid. John Halton looks human but he has mental and physical capabilities far greater than any person. The idea is that he will pose as Kay Bee's camera person until the time they meet the ruler of Khuruchabja, Lawrence Abdul bin Hassan al Samir al Rashid. Then John will become the king's bodyguard and Kay Bee will return home alone. Kay Bee hates the idea of returning to Khuruchabja but finds that she has no choice but to acquiesce. Unbeknownst to Kay Bee, John is also smuggling a computer chip into the country. Kay Bee may be unaware but other people know about it and want it. After they land in Khuruchabja their taxi driver delivers them to some people who will stop at nothing to find the chip. Fortunately, John is able to use his superhuman powers to kill the kidnappers but Kay Bee got pretty roughed up. That's when she learns about the chip and she is determined to find out what is on it. Through an old contact she is put in touch with a group of computer geeks. There are multiple layers of security on the chip and the final level requires a lot of computing power. They manage to get to play the final message for a short period of time and what they see is mind-blowing. Kay Bee and John don't know what to do with it except hand it over to the authorized contact. Kay Bee and John become close during the hours and days they spend together. John confides in Kay Bee that he is afraid he will be terminated since, to the government, he is just a piece of machinery. Kay Bee wants to help him but as they are constantly under surveillance it is difficult to change the planned handover. Could there possibly be a happy ending for Kay Bee and John? And what does the future hold for Khuruchabja? Read the book to answer these questions. I promise there will be twists and turns.

N. (which stands for Nancy) Lee Wood doesn't appear to have published anything since 2014 and she became a naturalized citizen of New Zealand in November, 2020. All of the books she has written appear to be out of print and there are no copies in my local library. That is a real shame since I am quite eager to read more of her writing. I guess I'll have to keep my eyes peeled at book sales and used book stores.½

As I started reading this book, I thought, "Well, the writing's good... but it must be terribly unoriginal, because everything in it seems incredibly familiar!" Around page 75, I figured out that the reason it seemed so familiar was that I'd actually read it before.
Sigh.
But, I really like post-apocalyptic fiction, so I kept reading it.
It is good, especially for those who are fans of the genre.
However – Wood's theory on why apocalypse came about, in this book, is a geomagnetic polar shift. You can read some stuff about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
However, the only people who generally seen to think that such a phenomenon will cause total disaster are the alien-conspiracy-Greys-Atlantis-psychic-power types. (Yeah, I like the theory that the reason that we have no evidence of truly advanced ancient civilizations is that when a magnetic shift occurs, all "artificial" materials DISAPPEAR, leaving only "natural" substances such as rock behind. AAAGGGH! Basic physics, anyone? Anyway.) Moreover, the changes don't (from all past evidence) seem to happen quickly. So – I'm not giving it a lot of points as far as likelihood of civilization collapsing.
The book is also named after the very interesting figure of Michael Faraday, the brilliant self-taught scientist, well-known for his research into electromagnetism.
However, Faraday is not once even mentioned within the text of the book. Too bad.

So, we have a story of a pilot from one of the domed cities that are the last holdouts of civilization. Flying his antique helicopter on a mission to try to find a source to scavenge fuel from (and also trying to secure his position in the city with an unfriendly Councilman, and wanting to resolve serious issues in his marriage), he runs into trouble, loses his ‘copter, and falls afoul of wild gangs of feral children. Saved by a young woman with a natural talent for chemistry, his mission is now merely to get back to his home alive – a task that seems near-impossible...

(Of slight interest(?), Wood was married to fellow sf-author Norman Spinrad for 15 years.)

Pretty good. A man with a passion for his helicopter explores beyond the safe zone in post-holocaust US. He walks back with the aid of outsider survivors and finds his home isn't so great.½

Started. Did not continue.

up to p.89 - shaping up to something like Silver Metal Lover with William Gibson speed.

Enjoyed the ride ~ this was the author's first book and I felt it sagged in some places under the weight of narrative about the politics of Khuruchabja that some decent editing would have streamlined. Khuruchabja is a fictional place in the near future in the middle east and the author's use of too many references to politics in our recent decade seem forced.

I see that previous readers have taken it to be a statement about global politics and women's rights, BUT I see it more as a metaphor about loyalty and what is human? And who do humans remain loyal to?

John, a humanoid fabricant at first is loyal to who ever legally owns him. Later he becomes loyal to Kay Bee although confused and damaged and finally unique. Like humans.

Rather liked this book, way back when. Was reminded that I'd read it after looking at the blurb for "Alif the Unseen".

It really hurts me to give this book a one star review. This is the second volume in this series, and the first volume, Kingdom of Lies, is truly one of my favorite books. I love Keen and Jillie, and the way the interact with each other, and with other people around them. I love the fact that they are functional, independent professionals, in very different fields, who work together well. When I finished Kingdom of Lies, and saw that it was book one in a series, I eagerly searched for the next, but it had yet to be published, and gradually fell off my list. When I saw this at the library, I snatched it up, delighted. And now, well...

I couldn't finish the book. That's rare, but especially for one so highly anticipated. There were several reasons. First, by the time I quit, I was between a third and half way through the book, and I had spent about 2 pages in Jillie's head, most of that clearly setting up a future conflict with Keen. I had spent probably 20 pages (I didn't actually check) in Keen's head, scattered over several episodes, and clearly moving him into position to be in conflict with Jillie. I spent the rest of the book with a variety of characters, mostly unpleasant, doing things that didn't interest me at all, none of which were connected to each other, or to Keen, or to Jillie, in any obvious way.

This last, by the way, didn't really bother me. One of the things that I enjoyed about the Kingdom of Lies was the way that a lot of seemingly very separate threads came together beautifully, in a richly satisfying way. Wood has earned my trust on that, and I would have followed half a dozen unconnected sub-plots to see how they come together.

No, the big problem is that this book desperately needs a huge TRIGGER WARNING on the front cover. The prologue, and the first section of each chapter, describe animal mistreatment and abuse in the most graphic way, meaning that for those of us who trigger on that, it's a nightmare. I very quickly learned to skip everything in italics, but there were whole scenes, chapters, that I skimmed quickly, trying to get past the stomach churning bits, only to have something equally horrific pop up once the danger seemed to be over. I finally realized that I had racked up more overdue fines than the cover price of the book because I simply could not read it, and gave up.

I'm very disappointed. I miss Keen and Jillie, and I hope that someday, somewhere, there is a volume 3, and it won't involve animal abuse.

Avery enjoyable story. No one is quite what they seem in the beginning. You can create your own reality on this earth, if you want it, work for it, suffer for it, enough. Even if she hasn't quite gotten her man in the end. One person can change the world.

I made it 126 pages in after one week, but I am giving up. This book did not make me want to turn the pages. Maybe in the mid-90s this was more fresh and exciting, but now it just feels dated and hokey, with characters talking into modems (not a very effective way to communicate) and the future looking much like the 90s except with holographic TV and a space hotel. Not my cup of tea and too many books to read, so I will move on.½

Did not enjoy. Rape fantasies, racist depictions. (Every time a POC of color's eyes were described, an animal comparison was used.) I generally enjoy end of the world type stories, but the world building was not sufficiently detailed for me with this one. I also wanted to read more about Sadonya, who was a far more intriguing character.

Halton is a humanoid fabricant, created as a bodyguard. Kay is an androgynous woman who has reported from the middle east as a man before and she is sent in to try to help Halton get out. Along the way she has to try to survive with her sanity intact. Everyone has an agenda except the android.

It's interesting and the characters are well drawn, it's less SF than feminist commentary on the treatment of women in the middle east. I enjoyed the read but wasn't terribly impressed and I'm not completely sure why.½

Kingdom of Silence is an engaging literary mystery centered around Dectective Sergeant Keen Dunliffe. He gets assigned to a case involving a violent animal rights group with an inexperienced female constable who just happens to have the right connections. The author goes into quite a bit of detail with both Keen and Rachel's history, giving the characters enough depth to make them very realistic. The story is set in the British countryside right in the middle of the foot and mouth disease crisis and you get a close-up look at the devastation caused both by the disease and by the authorities in charge of stopping it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Well-developed charaters that are flawed, but likeable combined with an intricate plot basd around an interesting and not very well understood historical event make for an intelligent page-turner of book.

I listened to this book on audio and I can highly recommend it! The narrator, Ralph Cosham, has one audio awards and its easy to see why. He captures the dry humor of Detective Keen perfectly.

This came highly recommended and I should have loved it, but somehow it didnt tick with me. I can tell it is a good book about a well built dystopia, a world where something went really wrong and people try to survive and, for some, rebuild. I just didnt quite buy into any of the characters. Still, I think it is a good read for anyone who likes these kinds of 'bleak future' books.

This is a difficult book to classify, other than just calling it Fiction. Originally published in 1996, the book takes place in a future not too distant from our now, 2008, while no specific date clues are given as to the “now” for the setting of the story. There are some developments that are still a long way from reality, such as custom grown humans, called “fabricants” in the story, that are still not quite human. Regardless of the time frame, deception using the world media is still a major part of statecraft in the story’s setting. While there are some Science Fiction overtones, as suggested above, the real plot is closer to Spy-Fi than Sci-Fi.

The story concerns a washed up burned out journalist, now providing edited news feed to the newscasters on-camera, being asked to reprise their past glory days of covering the war in a mythical Middle Eastern country one more time to bring a fabricant that is to serve as a body guard for a new ruler, approved of and favored by the next generation CIA. Complicating things are the fact that this newsperson is a woman. Like the last time she was in this country, to gain access anyplace, she must be disguised as a man.

If you are not familiar with the word “Mahdi” in the title, this is a religious figure in the Muslim faith that is similar to the Messiah of Jewish / Christian based philosophies. The appearance of the Mahdi is supposed to usher in a new era of peace for mankind. While this concept is integral to the story, the author presents this story as how politics, equally corrupt and power hungry the world over, and not religion shape the conflicts of the Middle East.

In a scene that is eerily accurate in foretelling future events, given the publication date, when the Mahdi does appear, in human form as a new ruler, his proposal to peace in the Middle East sounds very much like a proposal recently, as of January 2008, floated by Saudi Arabia.

While undeniably fiction, I found the story line very plausible, even without coincidences like the one mentioned above. What’s more, I found Wood’s style very flowing. Despite the large number of transliterated foreign words, the book became a quick read. The action comes at you in a nice pace and quickly sucks you in. I would like to find more of this author’s work and add it to my collection.

Overall, a good solid four star read. If you enjoy spy thrillers, try this for something a little different. If you are up on current world politics, this falls into the realm of Really Scary as a possible happening thing. If you are looking for hard core Sci-Fi, you may be disappointed.