Kirkus Review
Way back in fall of 2024, I paid Kirkus Reviews $400 for a professional review of The Extrapolated Man. It was, I figured, a way to get some credibility. I could post it on Amazon and so forth. And then the review came, and I was shall we say, “disappointed.” So much so that I set it aside for a few months before returning to it. Now of course you, my hypothetical reader, might reasonably think “Ah he got a bad review and he’s in a funk.” And it certainly wasn’t a great review. It was sort of middle of the road review. No, what pissed me off at the time was that it seemed like a careless, half-assed review. A review written after a quick skim, by a college student in need of some extra money who wedged it in between term papers. And that’s unkind, but hear me out.
The Extrapolated Man is firmly, explicitly, consistently set in our solar system. Everything happens HERE. Even the plot element of a faster-than-light drive never gets our characters farther than Jupiter. And yet: “It’s a post-intergalactic war universe…” So let me think. Interplanetary is between planets, in our solar system. Interstellar is between stars, like, say, Star Trek. Intergalactic is between galaxies. Star Wars is nominally in a different galaxy, so I guess maybe kinda? Anyway I hit “intergalactic” and everything that followed was tainted. My dear reviewer was clearly not paying attention, so how could I trust him?
So there it sat for quite a while. I did eventually snip out a useful chunk and splash it around where it seemed like it might do some good. It’s really not a bad review. But I was, and am, unimpressed with the quality of the service.
Now I feel like a grumpy old man with unreasonable expectations, so without further ado, here’s the review.
A treasure hunter in a Mars colony discovers a potentially dangerous record of an ancient man’s mind in Franklin’s SF novel.
In the far future, Maggie Lebedev lives in a colony on Mars and is a “technomancer,” meaning she can repair and reactivate old technology. It’s a post-intergalactic war universe, and Mars and Earth are controlled by tharks, which are fearsome, murderous four-legged, two-armed creatures. Maggie and her crew come across an old shipwreck that contains a nuclear thermal rocket engine, which they can sell, and they also find a skull. It has a “brainstone” attached, which stores a recording of a person’s life. Intrigued, Maggie gets the interface working and finds it belonged to Lt. John Gray of the torchship Tereshkova. He was a Space Force pilot, but oddly there’s no mention of him in the records. So why the coverup? As Maggie connects to the brainstone and pores through his memories, a new threat emerges when a mysterious villain appears and tries to seize the artifact. Maggie learns that Gray’s ship can travel in hyperspace, a capability the tharks deny being possible. If she can resurrect Gray in another body, perhaps the two of them can restore Gray’s ship and permanently subvert the rule of the tharks. It won’t be an easy battle, as “the old lizards who run the United Colonies are not going to give up a single joule without a fight.” Franklin’s space drama is vast in scope and in its efforts to create a new world with all new life forms and language. The premise is irresistible, and the narrative’s alternating perspectives across very different time periods on the Mars colonies work well. The protagonists are attractive and relatable characters with loads of talents and capabilities. The complexities of the novel can be overwhelming at times, however, and the space-age lingo and ever-evolving plot points are cumbersome and slow the story’s momentum.
SF that delivers a complex world and compelling characters. – Kirkus Reviews
