Kim Miller
A frozen planet but with mineral resources. The Company, ruled by The Algorithm, wants control, the locals want The Company gone. And born into the dregs of the world are two brothers who spend their lives trying to sort out whether the fierce energy between them is love or hate. It's dark, violent, gritty, dystopian and cyberpunkish, but most of all it's relentless in the telling of the story.
Yorick is awakened from torpor, suspended animation that resembles death. He realises he's on his home planet, Ymir, from which he fled decades ago. Coming back was not part of the plan. He's told he's been brought back to hunt a grendel, an almost invincible monster that lives in the mines, attacking and killing the miners. Yorick has a reputation of being the grendel killer.
In his childhood, he and his brother, Thello, played 'the grendel game', pretending to kill the monster. His relationship with his brother has always been tenuous. The two boys are poles apart in personality, Yorick is wild and tempestuous while Thello is calmer and thoughtful, and they are driven both together and apart by their mother's senseless violence. Yorick plans to leave Ymir but before he can leave he fights with Thello and Yorick's lower jaw is blown off. He's patched up by The Company's medical teams and vows never to return to Ymir.
Once he comes out of torpor he's fitted out by The Company with weapons and told he'll be sent into the mineshafts to find and kill the grendel. And that's where everything comes undone. He finds himself in the centre of a secret uprising against The Company and somehow his brother Thello is involved and in communication with the grendel.
It's a battle for supremacy between the local miners and the militaristic company officers and overseers. The grendel appears to have abilities that nobody knew of and Yorick and Thello are thrown together in what manifests as a battle of conflicting loyalties.
The pace of the story is constantly relentless. Larson manages to keep the stakes high and the steady revelations of what lies under the surface continue right to the end.
A frozen planet but with mineral resources. The Company, ruled by The Algorithm, wants control, the locals want The Company gone. And born into the dregs of the world are two brothers who spend their lives trying to sort out whether the fierce energy between them is love or hate. It's dark, violent, gritty, dystopian and cyberpunkish, but most of all it's relentless in the telling of the story.
Yorick is awakened from torpor, suspended animation that resembles death. He realises he's on his home planet, Ymir, from which he fled decades ago. Coming back was not part of the plan. He's told he's been brought back to hunt a grendel, an almost invincible monster that lives in the mines, attacking and killing the miners. Yorick has a reputation of being the grendel killer.
In his childhood, he and his brother, Thello, played 'the grendel game', pretending to kill the monster. His relationship with his brother has always been tenuous. The two boys are poles apart in personality, Yorick is wild and tempestuous while Thello is calmer and thoughtful, and they are driven both together and apart by their mother's senseless violence. Yorick plans to leave Ymir but before he can leave he fights with Thello and Yorick's lower jaw is blown off. He's patched up by The Company's medical teams and vows never to return to Ymir.
Once he comes out of torpor he's fitted out by The Company with weapons and told he'll be sent into the mineshafts to find and kill the grendel. And that's where everything comes undone. He finds himself in the centre of a secret uprising against The Company and somehow his brother Thello is involved and in communication with the grendel.
It's a battle for supremacy between the local miners and the militaristic company officers and overseers. The grendel appears to have abilities that nobody knew of and Yorick and Thello are thrown together in what manifests as a battle of conflicting loyalties.
The pace of the story is constantly relentless. Larson manages to keep the stakes high and the steady revelations of what lies under the surface continue right to the end.