When You Die You Don’t.

You have a clone with your backup memories. That is if you are rich enough or if you become a national hero by taking a bullet for the President. Rohnan Dooley is the later and the first to become Amortal . Now he returns to try to find out who murdered him but there is much more to the story.

Amortals is my first contact with Matt Forbeck’s writing and I am impressed but not surprised by the tight and action packed story after reading his bio. Matt also weaves thought provoking questions about individuality and identity into the story. I am definitely going to add him to my to-read authors.

The main character Dooley has been long on the job. 200 years in the Secret Service is a long time and he is starting to have second thoughts about it. But if he retires he loses his Amortality. The investigation soon ties in to his previous lives and to his estranged descendants in a way that further highlights the issues with being immortal.

Dooley is a man of action but he is also a national hero and the figure head for the Amortal Project so his murder draws public interest. Patron, his boss wants the matter resolved as soon as possible. Amanda his partner obviously knew his former self which highlights the problem with skipping backup for three months since he have no memories of her or the investigation leading up to his own murder. Amanda is also mortal which leads Dooley to consider the worth of his own life compared to someone with only the one.

It is a fast paced and action packed story that touches on murder cults, old enemies, love, assassination attempts, cover-ups, hidden agendas and a bigger picture. Agent Dooley channels Bruce Willis in RED, Die Hard and Dirty Harry while he tries to finds out what really going on.

The characters are well done and remind me of stories that gave me the same kind of feeling for the characters like Flash by L. E. Modesitt Jr or The Puppet Master by Robert A. Heinlein.

There is no mistake behind that Amortal’s spelling is so close to Amoral in my mind. This book isn’t about the murder mystery. It is about the bigger picture. But it is still good action. It was a book hard to put down. I read it more or less in one go.

Amortals is a high concept techno thriller that has been a delight to read and I would like to highly recommend it both to thrill seeking and cerebral readers of science fiction.

Information

Title: Amortals
Author: Matt Forbeck
Genre: Science Fiction
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot
Copy: Review copy from the publisher

Order from: Amazon US | UK

Today you die. Today you are reborn. Today you hunt the man who killed you. It’s Lee Child vs. Altered Carbon in a high-tech blast of tough-as-nails future thrills.

Matt Forbeck arrives as the new king of high-concept – with a blockbuster action movie in a book. In the near future, scientists solve the problem of mortality by learning how to backup and restore a persons memories into a vat-bred clone. When Secret Service agent Ronan “Methusaleh” Dooley is brutally murdered, he’s brought back from the dead to hunt his killer, and in doing so uncover a terrible conspiracy.

FILE UNDER: Science Fiction [Future Thriller / Cheat Death / Rogue Agents / Who Killed Who?]

I picked up Damage Time since I loved Colin Harvey’s debut novel Winter Song so much. And I am more impressed than ever with his craftmanship this is a totally different kind of story.

Damage Time is a classic noir at first glance. Detective Pervez (Pete) Shah is drinking in a bar when gorgeous dame Aurora Debonis enters in need of his help and after a night in his place she disappears and a body is found. It has some of the classic themes of the genre ‘The Setup’, ‘The Fame Fatale’ and ‘The Boss’, but there is so much more to the story and Colin does a good job in making it all come alive.

Much of this story centers on memory reading or memory ripping technology. Pete is an expert at finding subtle clues in memory recordings. He is the best Memory Association Specialist in the NYPD. New kind of criminals use the technology to erase memories of their crimes from their victims and then selling selected parts on the Web. The mind changing technology also made me reflect a great deal on what makes a personality and what makes ones identity because here it gets a bit fluid. It made me think, I like that in a book.

The protagonist Pete is getting a bit long in the tooth for the kind of work he does but he does it well. Being a bit older is something I can relate to and it is also a refreshing change from the usual twenty-something.

I am impressed by the vivid and subtle world building. Colin uses small strokes to paint a big canvas indeed. There is no info dumps in this story.

Pete is a halfway lapsed Muslim, something that still seems to be able to stir up aggression among the people in New York. In his world money converts to calories, what is left of US just got its ass kicked in the Middle East by the Arabic League, the interest on the US national debt is larger than their BNP, a seceded California is behind a huge wall and inside Homo Superior Californius go about their own mysterious affairs (much like they do today?).

As most good stories it takes care of the characters. There is even some romance. The action gets personal and close-up and it still affect me emotionally when I think about it.

Damage Time is a gritty near-future noir involving chilling mind ripping technologies, thrilling action and a memorable hero. Colin Harvey is a new writer to watch. I wonder what he is up to next. I know I want to read it.

Information

This is the second Novel I read by Colin Harvey. He lives in Bristol in the south-west of England with his wife Kate and spaniel Alice. His first fiction was published in 2001, since when he has written novels, short stories and reviews, edited anthologies and judged the Speculative Literature Foundation’s annual Gulliver Travel Research Grant for five years. Colin’s reviews appear regularly at Strange Horizons and he is the feature writer for speculative fiction at Suite101.

Title: Damage Time
Author: Colin Harvey
Genre:
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot
Copy: Copy from the publisher

Order: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

It’s 2050 and sea-levels have swamped today’s coastal regions. New York City is protected by tidal barriers and the USA is bankrupt.

Detective Pervez (Pete) Shah serves with the NYPD’s Web Crimes Division as a Memory Association Specialist. When he’s accused of murdering a glamorous woman in a bar, he must find the killer, save himself … and the world.

FILE UNDER: Science Fiction [Future Crime / Memory Specialist / Run for your Life / World in Danger]

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Bitter Angels was written by Sarah Zettel (isfdb) under pseudonym. It’s a military science fiction of sorts with a central murder mystery. And I liked it much more than Kingdom of Cages, which put me off from her, seems I was wrong.

The Erasmus System is a sprawling realm of slavery, smugglers, spies—and constant, creeping decrepitude. Here everyone who is not part of the ruling Four Families is a slave of one kind or another. But the Guardians, a special-forces branch inside the United World Government for Earth, have deemed Erasmus a “hot spot.” Somehow, it is believed, this failing colony intends to launch a war upon the solar system.

Ex-Field Commander Terese Drajeske, now a mother of three, has been called back to active duty and sent to Erasmus, ostensibly to investigate the murder of her colleague—and friend—Bianca Fayette. At first blush, the death defies explanation: Bianca was immortal. But beneath that single murder lies a twisted foundation of deceptions. Suddenly Terese is plunged into a vortex of shattered lives, endemic deceit, and one dreadful secret. In this society without hope, someone has put into motion a plan that will cast humanity into chaos. And Terese, who has given up her family and her sanity to prevent war, may be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice….

Bitter Angels is a story about hope and the belief that you might end all conflicts without killing. It is not an especially military science fiction if you with that mean soldiers, technology and battles.

It is a story about friendship. Bianca was Terese Drajeske’s best friend and mentor and when she dies under mysterious circumstances Bianca leaves her husband David and her three daughters to find her killers and stop the threatening war that she was trying to uncover. But it’s not a blind friendship, Terese soon find reasons to doubt Bianca’s motives.

It is also about the bound between three survivors from Oblivion, one a pilot in the security forces, one a doctor and one a renegade smuggler. And how that bound affect the fate of a whole system.

It is about how peace keepers sometimes keeps a morally wrong status quo for fear of something worse. The Blood family keep the Erasmus system in slavery and economic depression. Trying to remove them might lead to war so the Guardians don’t.

I liked the mystery part, but it took a bit too long to get to when it started to make sense, around page 300. I wouldn’t mind if the author made faster work of that. It left only 150 pages for the real action and the characters to grow.

Now and then I felt it was too much talks, meetings and dead ends that didn’t bring the story forward, but I might have missed a point or so. It slowed it down from excellent to good in my mind. Bitter Angels is a good mystery-spy science fiction and if you like that it’s a book for you.

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