Edward Ashton is my new favorite author when it comes to the ingenious world of science-fiction stories in a thrilling and chilling voice.
Antimatter Blues is a worthy follow-up to the soon-to-be-seen-in-cinemas Mickey7. Mickey Barnes establishes a shaky peacetime with the inhabitants of the alien world known as Niflheim when he gives them a nuclear weapon as peace offering much to the dismay of human colony’s Commander Marshall. All is fine with the world for a while, before winter comes along and the existing nuclear reactor starts malfunctioning. With a plausible threat of losing power and freezing to death, Barnes must go back into the danger zone and retrieve the peace offering. It’s only then he realizes the repercussions of what he did to secure his freedom the first time; he may not make it out alive a second time.
Antimatter Blues is the awesome embodiment of how science fiction can be blended with thriller elements to create something exotic and exciting. In Barnes’s quest to retrieve the nuclear weapon, he and his team face off against scary spider-like aliens in descriptive and artistic action sequences reminiscent of those in Robert A Heinlein’s Starship Troopers with futuristic weapons that are quite cool to visualize.
The action works so well because it’s led by characters that you actually root for. The first person POV centered on Mickey Barnes is mind-blowingly written with a mix of sarcasm and confidence in the face of grave danger. The realistic dialogues and thought processes of Barnes are fierce enough to put you in his shoes until someone taps you on your shoulder to snap you out of the experience, which is quite annoying at times. Even better are the interactions with the alien race. Barnes forms unlikely alliances with a representative of the alien clan and forges a bond that ironically teaches Barnes (and us) what it means to be a human.
Strap in for an edge-of-your-seat breathtaking journey across the universe with a story so amazingly atypical and thought-provoking that you will want to take at least a 3-day break from everything to process the entire book in all its glory.
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Purchase Antimatter Blues
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