Author Keanu Reeves in science-fiction book round-up | Things To Do

Glass Houses

By Madeline Ashby

Tor, $36.99, 272 pages

Toronto author Madeline Ashby pulls off something difficult in “Glass Houses.” It’s a novel that pretty much announces from the get-go that there’s a twist or two coming, but when they arrive they still come as a surprise.

The table is set when a jet carrying the board members of a Canadian tech start-up working on something called “emotional currency” crashes on a remote island whose only sign of human habitation is a strange black cube of a house. Things proceed to go from bad to worse as the team begin bickering with one another and then disappearing, as though the island is eating them alive. Kristen, the company’s “chief emotional manager,” looks set to be the last girl, but as a series of flashbacks reveal, she may be playing her own very different game of Survivor.

Ashby has put a lot into this book, and the plot takes time to unwind. But it does keep you guessing, and there are some enjoyably unexpected turns on the way to a fiery payoff.

The Book of Elsewhere

By Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

Random House, $38.00, 352 pages

Fans of Keanu Reeves and his late career Keanussance have likely already taken notice of the ultra-ultra-violent comic book series that he’s been collaborating on called “BRZRKR.” The title character, who usually just goes by B or Unute, is an immortal warrior born some 80,000 years ago who now works for a secret black-ops government agency. For branding reasons he looks just like Keanu Reeves in John Wick mode, with the trademark beard and lanky hair to go with his superhuman combat skills.

A “BRZRKR” movie always seemed to be in the works, and perhaps it still is, but for now we have this novel, an odd collaboration between Reeves and SF star China Miéville.

I call it odd because Miéville, a cerebral writer who can be self-consciously showy in language and style, isn’t known for high-octane military SF — which, for all the cosmic mysticism in B’s backstory, is what this character is all about. With this being such an odd match, the results are something genuinely different, making for an interesting new satellite in the Keanuverse.

The Mercy of Gods 

By James S. A. Corey

Orbit, $39.00, 432 pages

The authors of the popular Expanse novels, basis for a show that ran for six seasons on Prime, kick off a new series with Book One of The Captive’s War: “The Mercy of Gods.”

A tech company on the planet Anjiin is faced with unwanted new management just before Anjiin itself experiences an altogether different and far more serious hostile takeover in the form of the alien hive-empire known as the Carryx. The Carryx have a thing for taking the best and the brightest of their conquered populations prisoner and making them compete against other species for survival. But the techies are resourceful, and soon we’re involved in a broader captivity narrative that’s charged with a suspenseful mix of resistance and betrayal.

Since this is the first book in what may be a long series, you can expect a fair bit of table-setting and world-building. But it’s efficiently done, and the Carryx make for interesting adversaries who we can be sure will take a lot of human ingenuity and deep strategy to overcome.

The Family Experiment 

By John Marrs

Hanover Square, $37.00, 374 pages

Times are tough, and raising a kid is for many an even more impossible dream than buying a home. One solution that’s being offered in the future is a (virtual) reality show called “The Family Experiment” that has various couples (and one single “dad”) donning haptic suits and entering the Metaverse, where they compete at raising an artificial child — the “ultimate Tamagotchi” — in front of a live audience. The winner can choose to either keep their MetaChild or take the prize money and try to start a Real World family of their own.

John Marrs has a knack for near-future paranoid-thriller plots, which are grounded in the abuse of seemingly friendly technology that gets a little too up close and personal. “The Family Experiment” is set in the same universe as earlier novels like “The Passengers” and “The One,” and uses Marrs’ trademark ensemble cast of random characters to explore similar themes about how hard it is to keep a private self when our lives have become so much entertainment and information.

All of the contestants in “The Family Experiment” have something to hide, locked up in the basement or the attic, but they aren’t the only ones keeping secrets. Are they playing the game, or is it playing them? There are plenty of revelations in store as Marrs takes us on an entertaining trip into a future that’s more disturbing the closer it gets to home.

Alex Good is a writer and editor in Guelph, Ontario.