Retrospect

A departure from my normal reads although sci-fi was de rigeur for me in the 60s, and I felt it time to return. The story itself is a fairly typical taut political-social thriller but moved into the 35th century. In many of my recent reads I have despaired of decent descriptions of places, of context, as they often have narrative and little else. I cannot despair with Mr DeMinico's descriptions. They are detailed and you can certainly see in the mind's eye many of the gismos and technical 'advances' he has stretched from a familiar 21st century perspective. You were certainly breathless in the vehicle chases up and down roadways around the cities. I'm not so sure about the characters though. We have humans (possibly technically enhanced) who apparently live in the northern hemisphere and we have novi (red eyes and living in the southern hemisphere although these geographical statements in chapter 1 seem irrelevant). There is also the occasional alien but in a minor role only. I have little idea who the novi are, other than "From this industrialised strain, a new race born from man - the novi." This and a bit more at 48% into the e-book.. Given the importance of their role in the story this is frustrating. The one occasion when their speech is portrayed it seems sort of Spanish-Portuguese-Native American of sorts. As the novi, some of them anyway, are the main terrorists it would have been good to know more about them earlier to help set the scene. There are sufficient chases and gun battles between Jonah, the human Agent for good, and Jax and Trigarous, the bad guys. to keep the most battle hardened reader satisfied - lots of brain, blood and gore flying around from laser attacks. Once I had got to grips with the convoluted way of saying some things reading got easier and fair hummed along. Not convinced that this form of speech is likely to be prevalent in the 35th century given modern day indications that we'll be communicating in signs, emojis and 'text-speke' before long!! I was also rather amused at the fairly frequent use of "squished" which appeared well through the book and then obviously found favour with the author for some reason. It took me back decades to the film High Spirits with Peter O'Toole, Daryl Hannah and Liam Neesom - the one who was accused of squishing. Still, I enjoyed the book moderately, plenty of good descriptions even if the characters were a bit too 'action man' at times. I have to admit to having some mixed feelings about the end "The saga will continue".. Thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for an advance copy in return for my honest review.