Exodus Code - the Barrowman's deliver!

Torchwood Exodus Code
John and Carole E. Barrowman
BBC Books Sept. 2013

Review by Ann Wilkes

This nineteenth novel written in the Torchwood world created by Russell T Davies for the BBC show of the same name (2006-2011) was written by Torchwood star John Barrowman (Captain Jack) and his sister, Carole E Barrowman.

Torchwood Exodus Code begins with madness. Jack falls from an airplane without a chute in 1930 Peru, survives (Captain Jack is from the 51st century and - unlike other humans from that time or any other - can’t stay dead) and gets prepared for sacrifice to the mountain. The Cuari tribe have been expecting a god to fall from the sky.

All the while, his mind is slipping. Reality is shattering. He’s flooded with tastes and smells and unnatural reactions to sensations.

For a beat Jack realized the chamber was inside his head and outside it. Behind him and in front of him. He laughed at the absurdity and let himself sink back into the rock. The silver veins threaded themselves across every muscle, every limb, every part of him. Closing his eyes again, he could see himself being folded into the rock.

The sensation was wonderful, yet Jack heard himself thinking that this was not a good wonderful. It was a bad wonderful. It was the wonderful at the end of a thrilling journey. It was the wonderful after intimacy. It was the last hurrah, the final chapter, the kiss goodbye, the beginning of the end.

Jack lifted his arm and tore it away from the wall, snapping the threads.

He heard a sob. It tasted like ginger.

Back in present day Cardiff, Gwen Cooper encounters a madwoman in the aisles at a grocery store who tries to end her suffering by tearing off her own ear. Gwen is also succumbing to a madness that is affecting clusters of women around the world. And it has to do with heightened and crossed senses. Like synaesthia on steroids with some delusion and hallucination thrown in. Torchwood, an organization that investigates alien threats and defends the world against invasion, having suffered grave losses and being org-non-grata with the government, has been, for all practical purposes disbanded. Only Gwen and Captain Jack Harness are left.

When Gwen realizes there’s something wrong on a worldwide scale, she contacts Jack through a computer she’s stashed away down the street while her baby sleeps in her crib. She has the baby monitor. It will be ok, she thinks. She then hears footsteps on the stairs of her house. She’s worried Rhys will get to Anwen and realize she’s not home. Then he'll really be done with her.

Gwen stopped typing. Her hands frozen in mid-air. What if it wasn't Rhys?”

Gwen comes completely unglued and attacks and nearly kills her own husband. Jack comes just in the nick of time. Gwen is put on a ward with other women suffering the same “masochistic madness”. Jack and Rhys try to figure out what’s going on, but without Torchwood computers, it’s slow going.

Meanwhile, something is happening in the Earth’s oceans. Tremors, which are inexplicably not setting off tsunamis, are opening hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor and spewing toxins. Jack enlists the help of an old friend with a arsenal of special tech equipment aboard a ship in the Atlantic.

All the characters in the story come to life. I could picture all of them. Felt I knew them. Exodus Code is the first tie-in novel I’ve ever read. Well, that’s going to have to change. What a ride! It was like getting to experience a two-part episode of Torchwood with more detail and drilling down deeper into the minds of the characters and the forces at work against them.

No real familiarity with the show is necessary to enjoy this book, but being familiar with the characters makes it come alive. It’s a swashbuckling adventure meets sci-fi meets mystery. You are in Captain Jack's muddled head as he tries to unravel the puzzle. If he doesn’t figure it out soon, the world will end. No pressure.

The Barrowmans make a great writing team. The pacing, plot and scenes were very tight. Loved this book cover to cover. More please.

Red Planet Blues Rocks!

Red Planet Blues:
Murder on the Mean Streets of Mars
Robert J. Sawyer
ACE April, 2013

Review by Ann Wilkes

This is the best book I've read for months! Maybe years! What's not to love? You have the Frontier (Mars), the Gold Rush (only it's a fossil rush), a Chandler-like, witty detective, extreme conditions (no atmosphere outside the dome) and cyborgs! Did I mention the body doubles and mind swapping? This book has everything! I couldn't put it down.

The detective, Alex Lomax,  is even a fan of classic movies from the forties!  He's rough around the edges with questionable morals, kind of like Bogart in those movies of old, with the same soft spot for the women and the underdogs.

Diana was standing in her topless splendor next to the bar, loading up her tray. "Hey Diana," I said, when you get off tonight, how 'bout you and me go out and paint the town . . . " I trailed off: the town was already red; the whole damned planet was.

Diana's face lit up, but Buttrick raised a beefy hand. "Not so fast, lover boy. If you've got the money to take her out, you've got the money to settle your tab."

I slipped two golden hundred-solar coins on the countertop. "That should cover it." Buttrick's eyes went as round as the coins, and he scooped them up immediately, as if he were afraid they'd disappear--which, in this joint, they probably would.

The technology and the ways it is abused raise some very interesting questions, like where does our soul live? Do we have one and does it survive our body and live on in a download of our brain? What rights does an unauthorized cyborg have? Will a duplicate be able to think any differently than the original? Does immortality get boring? What upgrades would I get? I love books that make me think, and Robert Sawyer certainly churns out a lot of them.

This is the first book I've read by this author in which the mystery is the heart of the tale and he has mastered that genre neatly, while never straying from science fiction. The mystery involved so many reversals and plot twists which I totally didn't see coming that it kept me guessing throughout.

Read two interviews, one in 2009 and one in 2011 with Rob by yours truly, right here on Science Fiction and Other ODDysseys.  The 2011 interview includes a review of www.Wonder.

The Burn Zone is a blood zone

The Burn Zone
James K Decker
Ace Roc Feb. 2013

Reviewed by Ann Wilkes

I picked this book up off the stack of books I had sent to me for review even though I had others ahead of it. The others weren't grabbing me and I wanted to read something that would suck me in and not let go. The Burn Zone definitely fit the bill. It starts off with impending doom and intrigue and quickly moves to the run-for-your-life phase. In fact, the majority of the book is running, fighting, investigating, running some more, fighting some more, injuries, sorrow, more running, more fighting . . . and dismemberment. Lots and lots of dismemberment. Personally, I'm not a fan of vivisection in my fiction - or anywhere else.

The Burn Zone's protagonist is a surrogate mother to alien babies, who takes drugs to numb the pain from her troubled childhood. No. Not troubled. Horrifying near-dismemberment. Dragon freed her from the meat farm and raised her as his own. The surrogate program is meant to help the aliens who crash landed on Earth to empathize with and understand the humans better. Sam has cared for several of them. It earns her a little scratch and she feels needed.

When Dragon comes home early saying that they must leave with bare necessities right now, she wants to take the baby. While they argue a bit over that, the soldiers come, beating Dragon possibly to death. Sam makes a spectacular escape only to come back to save him, but it's too late. They've taken him. As part of the surrogate program, she has Haan nanomites that connect her to the babies she cares for. Her mites picked up the brain activity of the female soldier in charge. Why would a Haan abduct a human and be so hateful and violent? Everything she has learned about the Haan say it isn't possible. They are uber fragile and have no concept of violence.

She returns the child to the alien settlement to keep it safe before hunting down the people who took Dragon and rescuing him. Dragon is accused of treason, but Sam refuses to believe it. But he has smuggled a woman and two children from the Pan-Slav region and, so the news is saying, a biological weapon.

Sam is helped by a Haan sent to her by the Haan woman that Sam convinced to take the baby back from her. She doubts Nix will be much help and struggles with truly trusting him, but she's desperate and her options are limited.

The deeper into the mystery Sam goes, the more gruesome the truths and the actions. I have to say that I don't recall reading a more gory book ever, and this is a sci-fi novel, not a horror novel. Even the evil werewolf horror novel I read had less dismemberment and gore. And I read this while I had the stomach flu. Really bad timing. Or maybe good timing. I didn't have to worry about losing my appetite. It was already gone.

Nix closed the distance between them and I heard a chirp as he punched through the spot underneath her breastplate.

His fist went straight through, and splintered the latticework bones underneath. I expected to feel agony from her, but it didn't come. Even when he wrenched his fist free and I saw he had dragged something out with it, I sensed no pain. Instead, she looked down at the wormy mass that pulsed between his fingers and I felt fury from her, and something else . . . betrayal maybe.

So, if your stomach can take it, The Burn Zone is a thrill a minute. I really liked the protagonist for her determination to save her guardian and ultimately her world. She had her issues of distrust, fear and insecurities, but she fought them as hard as she fought the enemy.

I would have actually appreciated more down time to recover from the relentless chase scenes, torture and brutal fighting. Sam lost a lot of battles. I kind of wanted her to catch a break more often, to have more hope threaded through. But, I think it's more realistic when it doesn't come easy. She really is fighting against insurmountable odds.

I'd like to say something about the ending, but I really can't without spoiling it. I'll just say it will surprise you. It's dark, but leaves hope for a future.

You might not recognize the author's name, but you might be familiar with his Revivor's Trilogy as James Knapp, the first book of which won the 2010 Compton Crook Award and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. This is his debut novel under the pseudonym, James K. Decker.

The Silent City - A web series worth watching

The Silent City

Guest review by *Leonardo Ramirez

I’ve always rooted for the underdog in any entertainment medium. Be it books, film, comics or any other form, indies have it tougher because, for starters, we (and I include myself in there as well) don’t have the money to prop up production or market our beloved creation out the wazoo. In some cases, we’re just starting out and learning to hone our craft, but as we gain experience we get better and better.

With hardship comes perseverance.

With that in mind, I was happy to take a look at The Silent City, a web series produced independently by a group of talented individuals who raised the money via Kickstarter and bring their past experiences to the table.

As its website explains, The Silent City is a “new take on the post-apocalyptic road movie, The Silent City is an independent web series shot in the real-life abandoned spaces of New York City. When an unexplained event decimates the human race, the survivors must fight for their lives in the ruins of civilization.” Each webisode is about 4-6 minutes and there are currently 5 webisodes planned and available for viewing.

Eric Stafford, who served our country honorably in Desert Storm, does a great job as the unnamed lead character alongside Kettie Jean as Otsu. As a former Navy serviceman, he fits the part wonderfully as the only survivor of a post-apocalyptic world who is trying to survive the ravaged land. Rob Rusli’s music adds an element of atmospheric tension and begs the listener to stay right where they are while the concept art by Olli Hihnala is breathtaking. I strongly encourage you to visit silentcity.com for a glimpse. The cinematic photography and direction brings the viewer into a post-society world with realism and a sense of the need to survive.

There were some lingering questions as to what caused the apocalypse and what the main character may be in search of, but my hope is that these things will come to light as well as what roll Otsu plays in the master plan. The tone is significantly softer than a “Mad Max” feel and fits somewhere in between the aforementioned and “I Am Legend” without the zombies.

The Silent City undoubtedly has more than it’s telling. I look forward to hearing what it has to say and I, for one, hope that they succeed in sharing its secrets.

*Leonardo Ramirez is an author of Science Fiction and Fantasy. His new Children’s Steampunk book, The Jupiter Chronicles is available for pre-order now on Amazon. Please visit http://leonardoverse.com for more info.