Everfree [Kindle Edition]

Nick Sagan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though Sagan's latest future thriller is supposed to complete a trilogy that began with Idlewild and Edenborn, it's stuffed with ideas that veer off into fascinating but underdeveloped tangents. The genetically altered young Post Humans of Sagan's first books have gone through their bloody personal crises and now have settled down to revive the people who had themselves frozen to escape a deadly universal plague. Since the ones who could afford cryogenic sleep were the most "successful," they tend to be insanely competitive, unwilling to be guided by their saviors. And so factions begin plotting to take control of the new utopia and to revive private armies for rival communities. The book ricochets through its complicated plot in short, snappy chapters, most of them dictated by Hal, the Post Humans' chief of security. Hal's an agreeably cynical observer, and his lively sections summarize the action well. However, so much is going on and flying off in so many directions, that the book finally reads like a tantalizing summary of a really interesting novel. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In light of the complexity and originality of Idlewild (2003) and Edenborn (2004), the conclusion to their story rather disappoints. The Black Ep plague has wiped out humanity, except for the cryopreserved. The posthumans--the few genetically engineered to survive the plague--have begun to revive the cryopreserved in the U.S., frozen for 42 years, only to discover that since they had been the wealthy and the powerful before the plague, most of them want to resume control. The president expects to lead, of course, but has a rival, and both would-be top dogs use fear to control their followers. When U.S. society seems to be imploding, the posthumans go to Europe and China to revive humans there. Unfortunately, Sagan has let inconsistencies and facile solutions into the story and reduced some characters into caricatures. On the other hand, Halloween, the principal protagonist throughout, wrestles with his internal demons, thereby becoming an even more convincing character. A finale that resembles a weak middle volume more than a stirring conclusion. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 719 KB
• Publisher: Roc (June 3, 2008)
• Sold by: Penguin Publishing
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001CHODF8
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

More About the Author

At age six, Nick Sagan's greeting, "Hello from the children of planet Earth," was recorded and placed aboard NASA's Voyager spacecraft. Launched with a selection of terrestrial greetings, sights, sounds and music, Voyager has since left the solar system; it is now the most distant human-made object in the universe.

The son of astronomer Carl Sagan and artist/writer Linda Salzman, Nick was born in Boston, but grew up in Ithaca and Los Angeles. Frustrated with his junior high and high school experience, he spent his teenage years operating The Freehold, an electronic bulletin board system dedicated to role-playing games. By the mid-eighties, The Freehold had become the largest game-related BBS in Los Angeles, though this success came at the expense of Nick's grades--the time he could have spent studying, he wrote online fantasy and science fiction instead. Inspired to become a filmmaker by Patrick McGoohan's subversive and surreal television series, "The Prisoner," Nick dropped out, took his high school proficiency exam, and enrolled in Santa Monica College. Finally able to study the subjects that interested him, his grades improved dramatically, allowing him to transfer to UCLA's school of Film and Television. Before graduating summa cum laude, Nick wrote a script that the screenwriting chairman, Richard Walter, liked enough to send on to an agent. Within days, a production company optioned that screenplay and hired Nick to adapt Orson Scott Card's classic science fiction novel, Ender's Game.

Since then Nick Sagan has been steadily writing for Hollywood, crafting screenplays, teleplays, animation episodes and computer games. He has worked for a variety of studios and production companies, including Paramount, Warner Brothers, New Line, Universal, Disney, actor/producer Tom Cruise, and directors David Fincher and Martin Scorsese. Nick co-wrote the award-winning computer adventure game, Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands, a story of alchemy, obsession and revenge. His film credits include adaptations of Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, Pierre Ouelette's The Deus Machine, and Charles Pellegrino's Dust. His television credits include two episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and five episodes of "Star Trek: Voyager," where he worked as a story editor in 1999. At the turn of the millennium, astronaut Sally Ride recruited him to work for SPACE.com as Executive Producer of Entertainment & Games. During his tenure there, the spark for Idlewild came to Nick--but unsure whether to write it as a screenplay, a television series or a computer game, he chose instead to write it as a novel, and sold it to Penguin Putnam in 2002.

Idlewild went on to win a starred review from Kirkus, endorsements from acclaimed writers Neil Gaiman and Stephen Baxter, a Book Sense 76 pick, and selection from both Borders and Barnes & Noble as one of the best science fiction/fantasy novels of the year. His second book, Edenborn, hailed by SFX Magazine as "one of the best post-apocalyptic novels you will ever read," is now available in stores. The third book in the series, Everfree, will hit stands on May 18th, 2006.

Nick is married to his high school sweetheart, and spends most of his time in upstate New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AWESOME, September 23, 2006

By 

JC - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everfree (Hardcover)

My copy is a little tattered because I took it with me everywhere, hoping I'd get a chance to read just one more chapter between the things I had to do during the day. I had a blast reading it -- it really puts you in the post-plague, post-cure world where communities should be happy but instead, they head straight toward war. Suspense, characterization, great voice, a riveting story -- it's all there. I especially felt a deeper bond with Halloween and surprisingly, Isaac and Sloane.

I loved the stories of the plague survivors -- like the guy who's wife sacrificed herself to save him from the plague and now he desperately needs to find out what happened to her. Or the chauffeur who impersonated his boss to save himself. Or the folks who believe Hal and his pals are angels fulfilling a biblical prophesy. I also loved the sprinkling of historical and cultural references made by the narrators. It really gave me the sense that the post-human creators did everything they could to instill the importance of history and continuity and a sense of loss for civilization.

I just finished the book and it feels like a good friend just moved out of town. I want another Halloween/post-human story.

If you're wondering whether to read Everfree, do it -- it's a great ride. If you're wondering whether to start the series, run and buy Idlewild. You're in for a treat.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative and quirky, July 24, 2006

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everfree (Hardcover)

Looking back in my mental trivia file, I'm struck by how prophetic Nick Sagan's first claim to fame turned out to be. No, I don't mean his being the son of the last century's most likeable astronomer, the late Carl Sagan. It's young Nick's voice saying, "Hello from the children of planet Earth" on a recording that is still traveling in distant space on NASA's Voyager 1.

Those simple, welcoming words connect so powerfully with Sagan's recent emergence from the often thankless role of a Hollywood script and screen writer to become one of the most exciting new voices in science fiction.

That's because in EVERFREE --- the latest in his "post humans" series, following IDLEWILD (2003) and EDENBORN (2004) --- the theme continues to be about children maturing in a vastly changed world, facing a future riddled with social, psychological and genetic booby traps.

Set on an Earth still barely recognizable after a devastating pandemic called Black Ep, the bioengineered super-children of EDENBORN have taken their place among the fragile remains of human society as cautious and often unwilling leaders who seek to avoid the administrative mistakes, power-games and excesses of conventional government.

They know better than to revisit the old utopian schemes of humanity's past, but the idea of Darwinian struggle and anarchy is equally repulsive. So as good kids must do, they work out a precarious compromise based partly on the original model of the commonwealth. Star Trek's Mr. Spock would be impressed at how closely the post-human pattern for life follows the Vulcan path of dynamic balance.

But as a loose-knit global family of wildly diverse personalities themselves, the young adults and their brilliant but aging and stressed parents soon face challenges that no amount of hard-science training could anticipate.

It was the advances of hard science that made the EVERFREE storyline possible, offering plague-ravaged humans at the end of EDENBORN the hope of future healthy lives through cryogenic preservation --- the old but appealing idea of deep-freezing the terminally ill until their ailments can be reversed or cured. Now armed with medical knowledge to save all but the most advanced plague cases, Sagan's gifted post humans are faced with myriad practical and ethical questions as they struggle to decide who should be revived first.

Of course, the technical issues are no longer in question. Instead, the colossal problem threatening to tear the fledgling new society apart is a very human one --- that of integrating newly "thawed" folks into an environment where their previous wealth and power are meaningless. The post humans' we-are-all-in-this-together philosophy runs smack into old-fashioned rugged individualism, and the two mindsets mix like oil and water.

And that's what EVERFREE is most memorably about. Sagan brilliantly treads the thin ice of futuristic ethical comment, daring to propose scenarios that show us at our all-too-human worst, even as we cling to the shreds of social idealism.

With his characteristic crazy-quilt juggling of points of view as each super-kid has his or her say, Sagan's EVERFREE brings us to the brink of new hope without quite getting there. Along the way he's introduced old-style real conflict with weapons that kill, as well as adventure, revelation, romance, a tantalizing brush with alien contact, and even new offspring.

And that's where the story just stops, leaving the reader on an unresolved chord of anticipation. So if this really was intended to conclude a trilogy, let's hope Sagan changes his mind. He may have become a victim of his own success, but there are far worse fates for a new author! Personally, I can't wait to hear more from his imaginative and quirky post humans.

--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch ([e-mail])

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Everfree, November 10, 2006

By 

Jur (Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everfree (Hardcover)

In an excellent continuation of his first two books, Nick takes you through to the final phase of the battle for survival of the human race. The prespective of the narrative is somewhat different from the previous books and the challenges encountered by the heros of the previous books highlight the good and bad sides of human nature. Building a new society practically from scratch can be a source of an infinite number of different angles; Nick choses his own and keeps the story "human" with day-to-day issues as well as big-picture thinking. If you enjoyed the first two books, do read this one but don't just expect "more of the same"; keep an open mind and let the author guide you through his new world... enjoy!