Obscura by Joe Hart

Obscura by Joe Hart takes place in the near future, when a new disease called Losian's is attacking the brains of its victims, leaving tangles of neurons that cause trance-like states, occasional violence, and other issues. It's a bit like Alzheimer's on speed and it has already killed Dr. Gillian Ryan's husband. Now, her daughter has it, as well.

When Gillian is offered unlimited funding for her research into Losian's if she'll travel to a space station, where astronauts are suffering similar symptoms, she's hesitant. Her funding is about to be cut, not only destroying her work but the chance to save her daughter's life. Gillian doesn't want to leave her daughter, whose episodes of what she calls "the fuzzies" are increasing in frequency, but the funding she's been offered may be her daughter's only hope. Gillian's sure she's on the verge of a breakthrough.

She agrees, only to find that she's been misled. But, now that she's on the ship, Gillian has no way to return to Earth and no choice but to go ahead with the job. When people begin dying violently, Gillian is suspected of murder. Even she is not 100% certain if she's innocent. But, there's no time for that. Can Gillian figure out the cause of the memory loss and violence before it's too late?

Recommended - While I didn't absolutely love Obscura, I liked it more the farther I got into it and the ending was edge-of-your-seat, violent, action-packed, and exciting. I sort of predicted what would happen in the end and was correct to a point, but I did find a lot of the book surprising and I liked the concepts and loved the ending. I'm glad I read Obscura and I know exactly which friend I want to pass it on to. Recommended particularly to fans of sci-fi and action/thrillers.


©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Good Behavior by Blake Crouch (The Letty Dobesh Chronicles #1-3)

Good Behavior by Blake Crouch is not a novel but a collection of three novellas starring the same heroine, Letty Dobesh. Letty is a meth addict and a thief. Her behavior is so far from anything I've ever known or experienced that it's worth mentioning up front that you may find her a character impossible to relate to. That doesn't matter. The point is the taut plotting, the tension, the exciting action scenes, and Letty battling with herself, her needs, and her desire to stay clean and crime-free long enough to find and become mother to her son, again. While Good Behavior collects three Letty Dobesh stories under one title and the same title has been used for the TV series about Letty (which I have not seen), the stories don't all directly match up to the television episodes.

I read the Kindle in Motion version of Good Behavior, which was available from the Amazon Prime Library when I checked it out, a couple months ago. "Kindle in Motion" means there are some features you wouldn't find in a typical e-book, like gifs from the TV series, still photos, and the neon title flashing on the cover image. There is also some extra text describing the creation of Letty, the writing of both the stories and the series, which stories appear in the series and in what order, and the differences between the stories and the script.

The Pain of Others - In the opening novella, Letty Dobesh has recently been released from prison and gone straight to robbing hotel rooms with the help of someone who works in the hotel and has acquired a master key card. All is going well, for a time. Letty happily stuffs her bag full of electronics, jewelry, and the contents of the mini bars. Then, she hears a key card in the final lock. Unable to escape, Letty hides in a closet and overhears plans for the hotel patron to do a hit job. Should she call the police or stay out of it? Her decision will put her in danger, either way. What Letty decides is both fascinating, terrifying, and shocking. The ending will make you rethink the entire story and Letty's decision.

Sunset Key - The most heart-pounding of the three stories shows Letty with an everyday job, at the beginning. But, then she loses her job and is bang out of luck. Where will she go and what will she do? Whenever things go wrong, her first thought is getting a fix. But, then a dangerous man named Javier offers her an opportunity. A fabulously wealthy man is about to go to prison for the rest of his life and he wants to spend a single night with a beautiful woman. He owns a valuable painting. If Letty can snatch the painting and get off the island in the Florida Keys quickly, the payoff will be substantial. Letty is hesitant because it sounds more like prostitution than anything else, but she agrees when she hears her job is theft. Everything seems to be going well, but then the job is turned on its head and Letty realizes nothing she was told was the truth. Will Letty get off the island or will she die at the hands of a truly evil man?

Grab - Letty is tired of living from one drug fix, theft, or prison sentence to the next and decides it's time for a major change. So, she hits the road, intending to drive from the South to where her young son lives, in the Pacific Northwest. But, then she realizes she's being followed. Letty confronts the man and finds he's been tracking her because he heard she's good at what she does and he needs a very good thief to help him pull off a heist in Las Vegas. She's not that far from Vegas and the heist is a high-dollar theft. The only thing that keeps Letty from getting high when she's down is stealing. So, she agrees. But, things don't go quite as planned. Their getaway driver disappears and Letty's former therapist is in town, so she asks him to drive for them. He's suicidal. Will he show up at the right time? A surprising twist at the end of this story explains that absolutely nothing was as it appeared.

Highly recommended - I have not yet felt like Blake Crouch let me down. His stories are tense, his characters well-developed, the action thrilling. There's always something that isn't quite what you think it will be, but Crouch really used that to heart-pounding advantage in all three of these stories. Letty is a character that you don't have to relate to and don't even desire to. She's intruiging, kind of a nightmare, and a walking contradiction. You just want her to survive. But, you never know for sure if she will.


©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Afterlife by Marcus Sakey

London, 1532: A boy with no conscience and no family has been doing anything he can to survive when he sees another boy leave a ship in the harbor. He takes the boy's place and is one of the remaining crew who resort to cannibalism when the ship is badly damaged. Then, he dies. But, he's not done, yet.

Present-day Chicago: FBI agent Will Brody searches for a killer who has already taken 17 lives. He also falls in love. Then, tragedy strikes. When Brody awakens in a world where his gun doesn't work and people are trying to kill him, he's confused. Then, he stops one of the killers and is faced with an entire band of people brandishing weapons. What is going on?

The title is apt: Afterlife is the story of what happens to Will Brody, and later Claire McCoy (his boss and lover), when they're killed and move on to an afterlife that exists in a sort of parallel dimension to what we know as life, one of many levels that overlay the living world. In this dimension, there is no electricity or other power source. Fire doesn't burn, phones don't function. But, the dead can obtain power from each other by killing. When Claire and the serial killer both die and enter this same afterlife, she is concerned and wants to take him out. But, there's a community of souls who have banded together to keep each other safe from the "Eaters", those who are hooked on the power gained from taking other lives. When it becomes clear that Claire's concerns were justified and the serial killer has become even more dangerous, can Claire, Brody, and the others find a way to stop him?

Afterlife is billed as "sci-fi" but it's hard to pin down. I have a little trouble with the sci-fi label. If Afterlife is sci-fi, so is Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which I tend to think of as general fiction, a "What-if?" with historical backdrop, while Afterlife is similar in its creation of a world in which various lives are layered like a palimpsest but with police procedural and fantasy or paranormal aspects. What if there are different levels of afterlife for different types of death? What if there are still ways in which people can affect each other in this great beyond? And, what if doing so creates a damaging power structure? What if even the afterlife isn't the end?

Whew, lots to digest. But, the result is kind of a freaky fantasy world much like that of Joe Hill's N0S4A2, where bad souls are endowed with a dangerous power and the good must find a clever way to battle the bad and stop it from winning. If the bad wins, it could lead to an endless harvesting of souls as they arrive. The boy from London plays an interesting role that emerges toward the end of the novel but you'll just have to read it to find out where he comes in.

Recommended - A unique, surprising story that poses a fantasy of what might lie beyond our world and examines the idea that even those who appear to be horrible people might actually be good inside. The author then takes that concept and turns it into a wild ride with some gory fight scenes and a final battle between good and evil (plus a bit of travel between those post-life layers). All of this with a love story at its heart. Afterlife is a sometimes-violent rollercoaster and, in the end, satisfying. I loved the fact that you absolutely cannot predict what will happen from one moment to the next.

©2017 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.