Empress of Forever

Starred review from April 1, 2019
The first epic space opera from fantasist Gladstone (the Craft Sequence) incorporates wonder and wit to create a feminist, humanist playground of thought exercise. Viv Liao is a titan of industry, revered and feared in equal measure, and her enemies are coming for her, enraged by her acts of social consciousness. While making a last-ditch attempt to evade pursuit and save Earth from itself, she winds up in a Boston server farm from which she is transported on an Alice in Wonderland–esque trip through space. At once familiar and alien, this strange new setting terrifies Viv, but her powerful personality reasserts itself, and she’s soon in charge of a highly skilled, eclectic band of gods, monsters, and other strange beings who are pursuing their own agendas. All their stories revolve around the unofficial ruler of this universe, the Empress. Gladstone’s writing is delicate and precise, crafting a dense novel that introduces one mind-blowing concept after another, capitalizing on the concept of personal power while candidly addressing personal failure. This feast for the imagination intelligently captures the complexities of a variety of relationships in an adrenaline-fueled series of escapades and will leave readers both exhausted and elated. Agent: DongWon Song, Howard Morhaim Literary.

Starred review from May 1, 2019

Vivian Liao is a technology genius and billionaire who runs afoul of the government and decides to disappear--but first, she breaks into a data farm that has used her code, planning to take over the world before the government takes her. She doesn't expect to be attacked by a glowing green woman in a crown, wake up naked in a puddle of goop after escaping a giant egg, be attacked by robots, save a monk, or end up in space. As Viv learns about the Empress, the Cloud that binds all of existence, and her "soullessness" for existing outside of this Cloud network, she gains otherworldly allies, if not friends, as she attempts to return to Earth. Viv discovers that the Empress wants to stop another enemy, a mission that will ultimately destroy everything in the process. Vivian is an amazing woman: with no more than her sharp wit in a universe of AIs and enhanced beings, she still ends up being the key to the truth. VERDICT Gladstone's (Ruin of Angels) epic space opera and fast-paced adventure will thrill readers.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2019
Gladstone shifts gears from an almost scientific brand of fantasy (The Ruin of Angels, 2017, etc.) to fantastical space opera. Billionaire tech genius Vivian Liao has dangerously annoyed the political powers that be through her aggressively public liberal activism. So she breaks into a secure facility with the intention of hacking into the global computing network, which would allow her to counter her enemies and would, incidentally, give her world dominion. Not only does Viv manage to trip an alarm, though, but a glowing green figure brutally transports her several millennia into the future. That future is controlled by the same green personage, the Empress, who monitors everything through the Cloud (a far more evolved version of our own digital atmosphere), looting and then squashing any civilization reaching a certain level of technological sophistication to prevent it from attracting the deadly attention of a devouring species called the Bleed. Thrust immediately into danger, Viv collects a motley group of companions as she struggles to understand what's happened to her (readers will figure out Viv's link to the Empress before she does), find a way home, and attempt to break the Empress' stranglehold on the galaxy. Adventure breathlessly follows on adventure, crisis on crisis, so quickly one is hard put to recall each step of the journey; the main purpose is to bond a disparate team of heroes. The power of love and/or friendship overcoming a single adversary is of course an overused trope, but Gladstone actually has a valid reason for using it here: He's illustrating the danger of allowing one person to decide that she knows best and simply grab control of everything--even if that person is stratospherically intelligent and (at least initially) has good intentions. He also seems to be commenting on the dangers of the current Silicon Valley cult(ure), in which a company is driven by the quirks of one brilliant entrepreneur. An interesting and intellectually fertile enterprise.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 15, 2019
Genius billionaire entrepreneur Vivian Liao finally crossed a line that upset the wrong people in near-future America. As she is about to strike back at the system, she is snatched up by The Empress, a mysterious jade woman who is both very much there and not there. Vivian awakens sealed in a green membrane, and is then found and rescued by Hong of the Mirrorfaith. From there, the epic begins, told in the tradition of the best person-out-of-time-and-place stories of science fiction and fantasy. Along the way, Viv applies her software development and business management methodologies to recruit allies including Zanj, a fierce deity imprisoned in the heart of a star for millennia, and Xiara, a pilot born of the Ornclan who had never seen a starship. Gladstone weaves a fantastic tale of adventure on the grandest scale of epic space opera, spanning galaxies full of battles and traps as well as trade and negotiation, all told with humor as the crew seeks allies, weapons, and ships to fight back against The Empress to save the galaxy?and so Viv can find her way home.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)