Promotional Information

The nerve-shredding rollercoaster sequel to Nick Sagan's acclaimed debut, IDLEWILD.

About the Author

Nick Sagan is a graduate of UCLA Film School and has written for Hollywood, creating screenplays and television scripts. The son of Carl Sagan and Linda Salzman, he achieved his fifteen minutes of fame at the age of six when his greeting 'Hello from the children of Planet Earth,' was recorded and placed aboard NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, now the most distant human-made object in the universe. Nick Sagan is married and lives in Ithaca, New York. Idlewild is his first novel, his second, Edenborn, is now available from Bantam Press.

Reviews

The Black Ep microbe has wiped out humanity, and the few survivors are starting to differ over how civilization should be rebuilt. And then the Black Ep returns. From the author of last year's successful debut, Idlewild, and son of famed astronomer Carl Sagan. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Sagan revisits the future world of his well-received debut, 2003's Idlewild. The narrator of that story, Halloween, is now a minor character; there's a new generation trying to survive after the "Microbial Apocalypse," when the Black Ep virus wiped out all but a handful of humans. Sagan focuses primarily on the younger set, upon whose shoulders the hope of a future rests, telling the story through numerous first-person narrators. An early chapter from the POV of Malachi, the "right-hand machine" of Halloween's contemporary Pandora, succinctly explains the setup and lists the players (readers may find themselves frequently returning to it). What's left of the population is divided into two rival colonies. In the north live a group of young "posthumans," biochemically engineered girls who are immune to Black Ep, and their guardians. The liveliest and fiercest of these adolescents is 15-year-old Penny. In the south, there's a religious colony of people drugged to the gills against the virus, one of whom is the philosophical naif Haji, whose poetic narration makes a nice counterpoint to that of the increasingly angry Penny. Penny, Haji and Pandora provide distinct voices, but other narrators muddy the waters. A killing and the threat of a new plague bubble under the plot's surface but never take center-stage urgency. Sagan's sharp observations and rich imagination entertain, though, and lay a strong groundwork for volume three. Agent, Richard Pine. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.