Harbinger
Reviewed in The New York Review of Science Fiction
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"VERDICT Skillingstead re-creates the atmosphere of old-style Vonnegut and the ingenuity of Philip K. Dick in a tale that
holds its greatest appeal for readers who enjoy contemplating eternal truths in fictional form."
-- Library Journal
"…the way Skillingstead maximizes his story's emotional impact is very impressive."
-- Booklist
"When Jack Skillingstead turns to the novel in Harbinger, he mingles elements of the genres we tend to call SF and mainstream
so fluently it's clear they're all parts of a single language: one that subverts cliche and probes under the surface to find both humanity
and "singularity" in everything from family traumas to a far future of artificial reality and long-distance space travel."
-- Faren Miller for Locus
"Skillingstead's debut novel, Harbinger, is also emotionally complex and utterly absorbing. It is, without a doubt, a singular experience;
anyone who enjoys ambitious, visionary work should seek it out."
-- Strange Hoizons
"… a successfully ambitious novel covering topics from teenage awkwardness to the meaning of the universe."
-- Denver Post
"In a day when too many science fiction novels are all about the sizzle, with no steak underneath, HARBINGER is that rarest of
commodities--a character-based novel built on real science fictional principles, and daring to flirt with an edge of spirituality. Beautifully
written and thoroughly thought out. This is a great read."
-- Louise Marley, author of, "The Singers of Nevya"
"In a story that spans hundreds of years, multiple planets, and shifting realities, (Skillingstead) somehow renders an intensely personal
portrait of one man struggling to understand himself. The effect is like reading classic Vonnegut or Dick, but with an emotional punch
that is uniquely Skillingstead."
-- Daryl Gregory, Author of Pandemonium and The Devil's Alphabet
"Skillingstead has created an incredible novel, full of power, containing fully-fleshed settings, difficult questions,
and characters that you care for."
-- Luke Reviews
"Jack Skillingstead takes the reader on an acid-induced trip through a place where the many-worlds theory and quantum
entanglement collide with new age mysticism at the far edge of the world."
-- Brenda Cooper, author of Reading The Wind
"Jack Skillingstead Plays with big ideas, Olaf Stapledon big, but he plays with them on a personal scale...This book blew me away."
-- James Van Pelt, author of Summer of the Apocalypse
"It’s only slightly hyperbolic to claim that what Hemingway did for bull-fighting, Skillingstead is doing for SF tropes. He makes them truer
than they have been by showing that they were false. Harbinger makes SF “conceits” like immortality and the search for self authentic
and painful -- tools of trauma and rarefied beauty."
-- Alvaro Zinos-Amaro / New York Review of Science Fiction
Read the full review
originally published in THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION (March 2010, Number 259, Vol. 22, No. 7)
The text appears here by permission of the author and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.