Synopsis
“Conan meets Mad Max for a new generation.” –Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author
In the brutal wasteland centuries after the nuclear apocalypse, a warrior baptized in blood will defy the brutal empire that has enslaved his people.
Over two centuries have passed since the Third World War reduced civilization to ashes in a global nuclear inferno. Unforgiving geomagnetic storms rage, blocking out the sun and poisoning the radioactive Earth. Humanity clings to survival above the tempestuous skies in giant airships, sustained by Hell Divers—brave souls who risk their lives plunging to the surface for essential parts and supplies.
But this is not the story of the Hell Divers. This is the saga of the survivors on the ground, centered on Nick Baker, a frail orphan born in the perpetual darkness of an ITC bunker. He spent his early years toiling in a machine shop dreaming of what might be beyond the dark skies and poisoned wastes. That dream became a nightmare when Cazador raiders descended, massacring and enslaving his people.
From the savage cradle of life underground to the campaign of war across the brutalized surface, witness Nick’s rise from boy slave to a towering, fearsome warrior hell-bent on freeing his people from bondage to the great Cazador empire.
Embark on this riveting postapocalyptic adventure and discover the legend of a man his enemies will come to fear as Rhino …
Review
Nicholas Sansbury Smith trades the apocalyptic skies for the stormy seas in this Hell Divers prequel novel, Rhino: The Rise of a Warrior. The titular character became a fan-favorite following his debut in Captives, the fifth entry of the Hell Divers series, as a grizzled warrior in the cannibal army of the Cazadores.
Here, Smith winds the clock back a good thirty years, taking us back quite literally to the very beginning of Rhino’s story as an infant who only barely survived his birth in a run-down underground fallout shelter. As Nick Baker grows and becomes a part of the community, he wants nothing more than to become a Ranger, one of the men tasked with not only protecting their bunker but journeying into the Texas wastelands to determine if humanity can return to the surface. The radiation levels from the Third World War two hundred years prior have left most of the world uninhabitable, and what life is out there has been radically mutated. When a small team of Rangers respond to a distress call from a fallen airship, Nick sneaks out with them and into a trap laid by violent warmongers known as the Cazadores, who have been raiding the fallen cities for slaves and supplies. The bunker comes under attack and Nick, along with many others, are captured and forced into a life of bondage, and worse.
Captured, imprisoned, and forced to fight in gladiatorial games for the amusement of the Cazador king, Nick has only one goal — to free his love, Sofia, and escape from their hellish new lives.
As the decades pass, the once-frail and scrawny Nick grows into a muscle-bound leader, earning the respect of the other Cazador warriors, including the king’s lieutenant, the violent madman el Pulpo, as war is waged across the seas and wastelands of a destroyed world.
Smith is known for his impressive, post-apocalyptic world-building, a trait that has carried across the swath of his bibliography since his self-published debut in 2013 with The Biomass Revolution. With the Hell Divers series, the Earth is little more than an irradiated, large-scale disaster zone and what little of humanity is left has taken to the skies aboard massive airships…and their fleet is perpetually shrinking. As the series expanded, so did the discoveries made by the Hell Divers, such as those of the underground bunkers where Nick Baker was raised, as well as the secrets lost to history in the wake of World War III. The land is populated by mutant plants and animals, along with horrific flying creatures known as Sirens, who are sharp in tooth and fang, and hungry for human flesh.
While the Sirens are certainly brutal, they pale in comparison to the Cazadores, the epitome of the human monster. Selfish, thuggish, cannibalistic, they are a warrior tribe constantly in battle against not only themselves but everyone whose paths they cross. We’re constantly reminded of the good-hearted boy Rhino once was, but as his story evolves across the pages it becomes harder to reconcile. Smith does a fantastic job capturing Nick Baker’s evolution into the fearsome Rhino, a man who practically lives dual identities at cross-purposes in service to the Cazadores. Each life he takes is a stepping stone to his eventual freedom and his plans to free Sofia, but it constantly comes at a cost.
The question becomes, of course, how do we root for such a group of psychotic warlords and murderers? The answer is simple — by making the other survivors they find themselves entangled with even worse! There’s little room for empathy in this corner of the Hell Divers world, where the metaphorical bleeding heart becomes a direct path to the literal en route to a violent death. The sun may shine down upon the Cazador Empire, but there’s little brightness or warmth to be found.
It’s dystopian pulp hewn close to perfection, and at its absolute worst, Smith still manages to find moments of humanity even in the most dehumanizing situations possible. We root for Rhino because we understand the abject horrors of the various no-win scenarios he is thrust into, and because Smith has taken the time to show us the real Nick Baker, rather than man he presents himself to be in order to survive. He may live among the Cazadores, but he is not a Cazador. What would you do to survive, how far would you go for the ones you love, especially in an apocalyptic hellscape such as this? In the world of the Hell Divers, the logical conclusion is anything and everything, even as an overriding sense of morality and humanity puts natural limits in place. Survivors are forced to do awful, terrible things in order to live, but the good ones do so in service to the ideal of a greater good.
The catch-phrase of the Hell Divers series as a whole is, “We dive so humanity survives!” In Rhino, Nick Baker kills in order to live, and lives as a slave in order to be free. It’s an interesting series of blood-soaked contradictions, but that’s life at the end of the world.
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