The start to an interesting new dystopian series…
“I don’t want to know your reasons. I don’t care. Think of me as a bullet. Just point.”
Spademan used to be a garbage man. That was before the dirty bomb hit Times Square, before his wife was killed, before New York became a burnt-out shell. Now the wealthy spend their days tapped into virtual reality; the rest have to fend for themselves in the streets. Now there’s nothing but garbage.
So he became a hit man. He doesn’t ask questions, he works quickly, and he’s handy with a box-cutter.
When he’s hired to kill the daughter of a high-profile evangelist, Spademan’s life is upended. He will have to navigate two worlds – both the slick fantasy and the wasteland reality – to finish the job, clear his conscience, and make sure he’s not the one who winds up in the ground.
In the final few months of 2013, there was quite a bit of buzz around the genre sites related to this book. It has received a slew of great blurbs from respected and excellent authors. It was with great anticipation, therefore, that I dove into it when I received an ARC (quite a while ago, so I’ve been sitting on this review for some time). I enjoyed the novel, and Sternbergh offers up a rather convincing dystopian future, but one that at the same time felt slightly half-baked. The author has written a tightly-plotted novel that is certainly immediate and gripping. It left me wanting more, but not always in a good way.
