Synopses & Reviews
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times Speculative fiction -- science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism -- is special. It's where writers get to throw the Frankenstein switch on metaphors and give them life. We can talk in more ways, at more levels, about alienation or change or having one's world fall apart, because we can use real aliens or planetary disintegration to make our point. Sometimes heroes of sf and fantasy learn their psychological or moral lessons in very literal ways. They go places that we can't go yet, do things that we yearn or fear to do. They live out our dreams and nightmares of what the future might be.
So they're typically not ordinary folks with ordinary lives. It's not easy to find science fiction novels about 25th century soccer moms, or fantasy tales where the sheepherder is still a sheepherder at the end. But surely the future won't only be filled with deep space pilots or apprentice wizards. Even in the future, some of us will still be putting on the equivalent of a suit and going to the office. We'll have everyday lives.
Jackal Segura, the protagonist of SOLITAIRE, is certainly not an average citizen, but her life in the book is as ordinary, as daily, as I could make it. She has a job that she worries about doing well. She buys groceries. She rides the bus. She drinks beer. And she strives primarily not for vengeance or greatness, but for connection and approval. She's an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation. And like many science fiction and fantasy protagonists, she has a talent. Because I wrote the novel during a series of corporate jobs, her specialty became project management and team dynamics. She's an expert at corporateconnectivity, at building cooperative communities. And because this is the genre of manifest metaphors, she discovers that her home and work influence her in some unexpected ways. Jackal is, like everyone, an ordinary person with whole worlds inside her, and she gets to explore that interior landscape in ways that are only possible in the wonderful freedom of speculative fiction.
Synopsis
"The remarkable debut novel from a distinctive voice in speculative fiction boldly maps an ambivalent future -- and the perilous, provocative terrain of the mind."
Since the moment she came into the world, Ren "Jackal" Segura has been treated differently. As a hope, she is a symbol of the highest principles of human society and is guaranteed a position of influence in the global government once she comes of age. But two months before she is to assume the role she has been preparing for her entire life -- when she will leave her home to represent the massive corporate entity that houses, feeds, and employs her and everyone around her -- Jackal discovers that everything she believes, everything she is, is a lie.
Saddled with a crushing burden she dares not share with anyone -- not even Snow, her closest web mate, her dearest heart -- she must live as if nothing has changed. But on a recreational outing with the others in her web, she inadvertently finds herself at the center of a maelstrom of terror and catastrophe ... and in a single instant, Jackal Segura is a Hope no longer. In the collective eyes of the society that once revered her, she has become someone else: a pariah...and a murderer.
Now she must suffer a terrible punishment. Agreeing to participate in a "rehabilitation" experiment, she surrenders to a virtual solitude, imprisoned alone in a cold gray box in her mind, where months will seem like years and the demons of her psyche will be allowed free rein. But Jackal's history as a Hope has given her strengths and skills other prisoners lack -- powers she will need to endure the tormenting loneliness; to survive, branded and despised, back in a world she doesn't know;to uncover the truth about her cruel betrayal; and to rediscover her life, her love, and her soul -- in a strange place of shattered hopes and new beginnings, called Solitaire.
About the Author
Kelley Eskridge is the Tiptree and Nebula Award-nominated author of numerous works of short fiction. Her stories have appeared in Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and other compilations. Solitaire is her first novel.