HOPE'S END

First-time novelist Chambers, a University of Chicago sophomore, would seem an apt pupil of "write what you know" with this angst-ridden tale of a young man's struggle to define his own life. On the planet Hera, where the city-state of Hope, dominated by the Church and the Executive Council, is the only human colony and the surviving culture is low-tech and agrarian, street youth Vel progresses rapidly to missing heir to the throne. When the expected five-year summer fails to occur and the king dies, a struggle ensues between Hillor, leader of the Council, and Denon, lord of the Church, over who will survive Hope's coming famine. Vel, in turn, is led to discover the secrets of his own origins and must decide to preserve or to reverse the traditions being thrust into his hands. It is a curious mixture of 19th- and 20th-century power ideologies that Vel grows up into, one in which Church guards wear "swas" (swastikas) and valuable heirlooms bear the names "B. Mussolini" and "Nietzsche." Stranger still is their founder, Blakes, a clone of the English mystical poet William Blake. Worshipped as the "great man" in a way that recalls Ayn Rand, Blakes is perhaps the author's ironic comment on the conversion of revolutionaries into reactionaries after the coup. The book remains Vel's story, though it dangles such mysteries and paradoxes before the reader. As a coming-of-age study, it succeeds, if at the cost of fleshing out a believable world in which other characters' choices carry real weight. (Aug. 20)

Forecast:Given the author's youth, expect lots of media attention, which could result in higher than average first-novel sales.