Idlewild

Rating:
Summary: Thrilling & Poignant
Review: Idlewild starts off as a quirky story about a teenage amnesiac but swiftly heads into unfamiliar waters, ratcheting up the tension and the stakes until it builds into a monster of a good story. The plot is too much fun for me to give away, and instead of reading reviews that do, you're much better off just picking it up and giving it a try. You'll either tap into it or you won't, but if you do, look out.
Sagan is a rare find, a skillful writer who has something meaningful to say. I look forward to many more novels from him.

Rating:
Summary: Thrilling & Poignant
Review: Idlewild starts off as a quirky story about a teenage amnesiac but swiftly heads into unfamiliar waters, ratcheting up the tension and the stakes until it builds into a monster of a good story. The plot is too much fun for me to give away, and instead of reading reviews that do, you're much better off just picking it up and giving it a try. You'll either tap into it or you won't, but if you do, look out.
Sagan is a rare find, a skillful writer who has something meaningful to say. I look forward to many more novels from him.

Rating:
Summary: A novel of high drama and suspense which is gripping
Review: It's hard to neatly peg this gripping novel of suspense: take the near-future story of a rebellious teen amnesiac, add the mystery of a figure called Lazarus, and spice it with a virtual reality/gothic setting and you have Idlewild, a novel of high drama and suspense which is gripping and involving.



Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding
Review: Neil Gaiman called this book a "roller coaster ride of fusion fiction" and it's easy to understand why. This delightful and diabolically intricate creation transforms from caterpillar to butterfly by way of gothic fantasy, mystery, apocalyptic science fiction, mythology, eschatology, a coming of age story, and even a romance. Ambitious novels like this run the risk of seeming all over the map, but Idlewild hangs together beautifully, with influences from each genre synthesized and reinvented through the pen of an imaginative and strikingly original storyteller.

Sagan begins with a pinpoint focus on his flawed but likeable antihero, who must solve the riddle of his amnesia, and gradually widens the scope to explore a deeper mystery that involves the whole of humanity. Multiple plotlines thread together seamlessly as hidden layers are revealed. This is a rich, dark, compelling tale that refuses to insult the reader's intelligence. Dialogue crackles and sparkles, and the protagonist's inner monologue builds to a furiously witty fever pitch.

My only complaint would be the pacing. It's one of the fastest novels I've ever read, and I tore through it so quickly that I'm left wanting more. That's about as negative as I can be here. Idlewild is simply that good, one of those rare books that stays with you long after you've closed it.

Highly recommended for everyone, and especially for fans of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series.

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent and Thought-Provoking
Review: Nick Sagan's Idlewild is best described as a cross between Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk and Neil Gaiman. This futuristic tale is all about the power of mankind over its own fate and the way in which the human race is a self-destructive one. Sagan takes us into a bleak and uncertain future that has more questions than it has answers, that has more darkness than it has light.

Welcome to Idlewild, the school of the future, where young men and women are shaped to become the very best they can be. The book opens with Halloween, a young man suffering from amnesia. He awakens in a strange, video game-like world where everything seems to be just a little bit off. He believes he has murdered Lazarus, a friend of his, though he doesn't know how or why.

As Halloween stumbles through this world, trying to uncover his personality in order to deal with the strangeness that surrounds him, he slowly unearths a plot that will change not only his existence but also the life of everyone concerned with Idlewild.

Saying any more about Idlewild would be ruining and perfectly entertaining and often thought-provoking read. Like his father, the great Carl Sagan, Nick Sagan seems to understand technology and uses it with great ease. Through his book, he poses many questions about humanity and our place in the world, questions that will stay with you for quite some time. This isn't lite reading. It's the kind of book that will make you think and debate with yourself.

Unfortunately, the book does falter in its last third, where the story seams to stall for a while until it offers us a somewhat disappointing finale. But the book is worth reading for its first half alone, which gave me something completely different and new. Sagan's writing feels cold and removed, true, but that's only because Halloween distant and removed. And the story contains enough twists and turns to please any type of reader.

Idlewild isn't a masterpiece, but it does presents its readers with a bight new voice in speculative fiction. Sagan's vision of the future is both terrifying and enticing, intriguing and completely disturbing. A very good read.

Rating:
Summary: Better than the Matrix
Review: OK, maybe you're like me and you loved the first Matrix movie but found the sequels disappointing, and then the more you thought about it the less sense the whole series made. I mean, really, how do you beat computer programs with kung fu?

Idlewild reminded me of the Matrix, but so much better. A dark, twisty, scary but ultimately credible exploration of the whole multiple reality theme. This one's a keeper. I can't wait to see what Sagan does next.

Rating:
Summary: The best book I've read in the past few months
Review: Sagan's first novel surprised me in that I rather expected it to be fantasy, based on the cover. The first part of the book carried me along in that notion, but then I discovered it was so much more.

This is by no means a polished work, but it is very very good for a first novel. I've read a lot of sf, and this still managed to surprise me (plotwise). Which was refreshing.

It might not be knock your socks off good, but it's definitely worth reading. I'll be nominating Sagan for the Campbell award (best new SF Author) this year.

Rating:
Summary: Idlewild, an amazing read!
Review: Ten kids, growing up in a school. A virtual school, in a virtual world. Lied to by every program and every programmer about who they are, their purpose, and their future. Never knowing their real family, never knowing what real life was like. Trained to be the future elite, doctors. Trained in reality to reincarnate the world. The Black Ep has killed off everyone, so in humanities last attempt at having a future they program this world, all for training of these ten specially designed children, to grow and live in a simulation of life, as to restore real life. They hate it at the school, so want to get out to live in the "real" world, and go to a "real" school, when, in reality it is the same as the virtual world of the school, only they don't know it.
The main character, Halloween, never believed in any of this, and rebelled against it all, his teacher, Maestro; his "parents," his peers, everything.
Another character, Lazarus, is surely dead, and Halloween has been attacked, but isn't dead, and he must find who has tried to kill him and who has killed Lazarus. Nobody believes someone is trying to kill anyone, for the program doesn't want fear in its students, the program even says that Lazarus just disappeared because he "graduated." Halloween doesn't believe this, and strives to find the answer.
This has to be my favorite book in a long while. It is high-tech, yet cultured, and smart. Written in such a beautiful way you never wish to set it down... you are fully tossed into the world Nick Sagan has created. It is a dark, lonely, sad, desperate novel, in which there are lies, death, loss, confusion, hatred, and backstabbing around every bend.
This truly is a beautiful book, one of my favorites of all time. An intelligent, wonderful, detailed, emotional first novel. It's hard to believe writing can get better than this, but let's see what Sagan can do with experience.

Rating:
Summary: Reads like bad sci-fi channel drivel
Review: This book tries really hard to be intelligent and probably manages to fool most, but the story is too far-fetched to take itself so seriously. The characters are drawn up like soap opera stars we're supposed to envy, but it's hard to build up any respect for shallow, angsty teens with bad attitudes, with or without their superior intelligence. Top it off with a plot that can only be described as flat-out annoying, and you've got a big waste of time on your hands. Don't do it, folks.

Rating:
Summary: truly excellent
Review: This hypnotic and absorbing novel begins mysteriously and ends with tremendous force. It has many things going for it.

+ clever plotting
+ a nuanced, emotionally complex protagonist
+ breakneck pacing
+ imaginative imagery
+ absorbing themes

But what I love most about Idlewild are its subtleties. Each time I read it I discover something new.