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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In The Second World by Jake Korell, Flip Buchanan grows up inside a Martian colony where power is exercised through ceremony, media displays, and corporate rituals. While adults hold authority in public, Flip builds his real life with his friends Pepper, Rizz, Pockets, and Cheese, learning how the systems operate by watching how often they fail. As Mars moves toward self-government, Flip’s father, Buzz Buchanan, rises in public power; Flip is pulled into this environment not through ambition but through proximity. Choices made at home begin to echo beyond the family as Flip’s relationships draw him closer to the events unfolding across the colony. As the personal bonds formed in his youth become inseparable from public consequences, Flip is placed in the path of decisions that influence how Mars defines itself.
Jake Korell’s The Second World is a comedic science fiction novel about Mars, politics, cloning, friendship, and adulthood with a massive side of imagination and satire. The science fiction tech itself is on point, mingled with wit. I mean, a counterattack staged in ape costumes on mechanical horses is the stuff of legends. Flip is easy to like as a main character, protecting people when they need it most, helping a trapped clone escape through tunnels, and, in a move I would not recommend to readers, swallowing a key. Korell's writing is intelligent, and he avoids the trap of diminishing the story's genuinely serious themes. The work is polished, and the jokes land through tactical timing that keeps the emotional beats light. The settings are visual, from the besieged Town Hall lit by failing power and confetti debris, to the CHARLIE medical ward where bodies rest while minds remain elsewhere. The ending is surprising and satisfying, and this is a book I'm likely to pick up and read again.
