Synopsis
An Englishman, a freedom fighter and a scientist walk into a bar.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
It’s 2042 and this Englishman, he’s been through the wars. Scully just wants a drink and enough coin for another round. He doesn’t care for New Industry politics, gang wars or science projects that could change the world.
But this bar’s special. It’s the sort of place people go to hire help with those things.
People promising a lot of drinking money.
The sort of money that might get your average lout tearing up the American Remnant, cussing from one violently hungover encounter to another, to hell with the consequences.
And the consequences of this particular encounter – they’re big. Soil-your-pants big.
See, there’s a mark who needs protecting, Laine Faergrowe, and he’s no typical scientist. And this ain’t like other jobs. With every man fighting for himself in this corrupt wasteland, here’s a guy offering a little piece of hope. Shame so many people want him dead.
Our Scully, drunk and/or irritable and with barely a noble bone in his vicious body, is the only one who can save him.
Lucky for us, he knows how to put the punch in punchline.
Review
Crude, wasteland eloquence, pros that reeks of the rusted, wayward decline of civilisation with an aftertaste of cyberpunk and a hard-ass alcoholic with the skills to make the thrills.
The government is gone, the military, and any form of parental organisation that isn’t driven by narcissistic profit has deteriorated into more refuse to choke up the squalid streets.
Scully’s outlook perfectly matches the setting. A setting that, despite Williams’ richly delivered narrative (from Scully’s POV), feels neglected, ruined, and perfectly dystopian. This world has been lived in, its tech and infrastructure squeezed of all its life, twisted and crushed up like a can ripe for kicking through the wasteland.
Scully’s ragtag collection of mercs, come in their own disaffected flavours, each of them victims of the hand-to-mouth nature of working to put beer on the table. The banter and interactions between them are a treat for any heist fans, think GTA meets cyberpunk in a retro museum long after the corporations have sucked the cities dry. This book is very much post cyberpunk, there’s no more money to keep the neon flashing.
There is an authenticity to Scully and his blunt but agile mind. An authenticity that I’m pleased to say never faded as the chaos unfurled around him. He always wanted a drink, he always wanted to charge in, uniquely delicious guns blazing, but he was no fool and his veteran survivor/merc status shone through his brute-in-a-china-shop instincts to give his character glorious stability.
Layers of trouble continue to settle over Scully and his crew as they become involved in real big-picture stuff. Big players with big guns and big armies of authoritarian goons. Needless to say, our ragtag merc wasteland darlings put a decent-sized hole in said army but find brief reprieve from the chaos surrounding them throughout.
The hardened, post-apocalyptic posse eventually come to the crux of what they’re fighting for and the core of this story is revealed, but for me, it’s not really the focus. This tale is about the people that got smashed into it. The people, already scarred, frustrated, and affected by the greed and ruin they’ve grown accustomed to. These tenacious wasteland tumbleweeds are what make this an enjoyable ride through the wild and, although not entirely unique, well-crafted take on a world gone as sour as a hard-drinking merc’s tormented liver.
For lovers of Mad Max, cyberpunk, and flawed but beautifully authentic main characters that do what they want, not necessarily what you would. This brand of post-apocalyptic wasteland does come with a side of hope and speculative reflection; the question is, will humanity find its way in the coming books, or are they/we doomed to repeat the patterns of the past that will surely lead to life imitating art as the remaining tech crumbles and the last shred of moral fibre perishes in the ever-expanding desert?
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