After witnessing the brutal death of his parents, a young caveboy is roaming through a barren, parched land with nothing but his newborn brother strapped to his chest.
Unwilling to accept his loss, the boy sets out on a dangerous path to reach the home of the gods—a mountain looming in the distance—in search of a way to reunite with his parents. But the grief-stricken journey to the mountain is also a violent exile into adulthood, and the mountain holds secrets the gods are unwilling to share. Not without sacrifice.
The wrenching, at times difficult-to-parse opening passages will challenge readers, but Nikita’s storytelling is smart and assured—and Logos, like life itself, gets easier as its characters become increasingly human. Nikita has crafted the story as a series of firsts, like the eldest’s first kill; his first experience naming things; his first impulses toward communication through artistic creation; his discovery of the Promethean element he and the youngest call “fos”: “This merciless, glorious thing or creature or state, hissing and roaring as it destroys everything it touches.” Keeping a fire going, like survival, brings rules and ritual and the language to explain them.
Eventually, the brothers are the heart of a community, with Nikita exploring the key trait bringing humanity to that point: not just the will to survive, but the conviction (“I want more!” one brother realizes in a truly epochal moment) that life can be about more than endurance. As the humans share and develop language, the novel itself becomes more conventional in its prose, though thoughtful readers interested in the dawn of consciousness will find the denser passages reward the effort they demand. Pushing through is how we became human.
Takeaway: Brutal, richly imagined vision of prehistoric humanity emerging from the darkness.
Comparable Titles: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Shaman, Peter Dickinson’s The Kin.
Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A-
