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Decimation
The year is 2117, Global super powers are vying for superiority and everything is privatised, from Governments to Warfare. Politicians are openly sponsored like sports stars, whilst sports stars and soldiers are grown in a lab. It is an era of gene splicing and neural interfacing with 90% of the Earth's remaining population hooked into the CLOUD, downloading data directly into their cerebral cortex. Earth's natural Human population is dwindling, the result of wars, famine and viral outbreaks, with colonisation programmes under underway for the Moon and Mars, and the planet's population is now under threat to be reduced even further... Tyr, a genetically engineered mercenary, is drawn into a web of lies and deceit when a beautiful thief from his past is kidnapped by Erik Van Gar, a wealthy businessman with a plan to seize control of the Continental United States. Van Gar forces Tyr to act as his own private assassin. The former soldier's mission: to track down and kill 10 'targets', people who can implicate Van Gar, before he triggers a series of events that will result in the nuclear Decimation of America's East Coast. Death is a job Tyr is well equipped for, both physically and morally. Using every asset at his disposal and with a passion for brutality he is unleashed careering across the globe in The Reaper, his orbital drop-ship, leaving a swathe of destruction and violence in his path, to save the life of the only woman he's ever cared for and, potentially, the millions of American lives that now hang in the balance.
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First published February 1, 2015
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March 31, 2015
My personal friend Dan Webster has written a top-notch first novel, a kicka$$ sci-fi action adventure, and I very much look forward to his 2nd and 3rd book in the series (which the About The Author page assures us are already underway)! Very much a book for present-day readers, and in some ways a nostalgic homage to 1980s action-adventure films like Schwarzenegger's "Commando": "Then, like something from a nineteen eighties action film she saw *him*." (p. 59)
There are also a couple of scenes that strike me as an homage to another favorite author of mine--and a Mutual Friend of both myself and Dan's--S.A. Bailey (author of "And the Rain Came Down" and "The Lines We Cross"), such as a reference to "shooting motherf*ckers in the the face" and giving a dog abuser his just desserts.
Set in the year 2117, wherein the Earth is war-torn and pretty much fully corporatized (among other things, politicians are shamelessly sponsored like sports stars) and the ever-dwindling human populace is colonizing the Moon and Mars to get away from Earthbound misery, genetically-engineered and lab-grown mercenary super-soldier and all-around badass Tyr (legal name C.8.6.9.4.2.B, eh, what a stuff formality) is blackmailed by ultra-wealthy business tycoon Erik Van Gar (who lives on the island of Montserrat, which in recent real-life history was ravaged by a devastating volcano) into killing 10 high-value "targets," i.e. people around the globe (and one off-the-globe) who have had the misfortune of being significantly associated with Van Gar and who can implicate the tycoon before he sets off his nuclear doomsday plan (or "Decimation," if you will, hence the title) against the U.S. East Coast which EVG intends to follow-up with under the guise of being America's new savior and benefactor.
How does EVG blackmail Tyr? By threatening the life (via cranial implant) of the only woman with whom Tyr has ever shared a deep emotional bond in additional to physical attraction, the ravishing, sultry, super-sexy redhead and professional thief, Ms. Kinga Ballentine. To give you an idea of just how smoking hot Kinga is, read the author's description on p. 9: ""She quickly slipped into a pair of tiny shorts barely covering the tattoo on her leg, a ring of small Santiago crosses situated high around her upper thigh, which, from a distance looked like a garter...Yes, that was her...Mid-thirties, looked mid-twenties, with the body to match, and the raging libido of a teenage boy...She had a Scottish mother and Irish father...like making a baby from semtex and dynamite." WOWZA!!
Tyr doesn't find out about Kinga's deadly Van Gar-initiated implant until after he's already rescued her from the villain's cell in a daring raid (the same one references in the 1980s analogy in the first paragraph for my review), and Tyr is severely mentally and emotionally conflicted about keeping this secret from Kinga as she assists him on his globe-and-space-trotting assassination assignments. Tyr & Kinga are also assisted by the merc's old buddy Duke, an African-American chap and former field colleague of Tyr's who's now a tech whiz and owner of a nightclub in Bangkok, Thailand (if "Decimation" were ever made into a film, methinks Craig Robinson, whoplayed Nick in "Hot Tub Time Machine," would be a good choice to portray Duke).
Mr. Webster has filled this book with non-stop, rollicking action, lots of steamy sex, and plenty of humour as well--Tyr's banter with Kinga and Duke alike produces plenty of LOL/LMAO moments. Further entertainment are furnished by Tyr's spaceship "The Reaper" (a "flying man cave," as Kinga refers to it on p. 72; hey, where can I get one of those, heh heh!), his amazing arsenal (which includes, among other things, .458 derringer, .44 Magnum Mateba revolver, and an Israeli-made .50 AE autopistol, niiiiiiice!!!) and Dave, his oh-so-kill-crazyy yet paradoxically oh-so-loving and cuddy pet leopard hybrid (based partially on Dan's real-life pet feline Dave).
Just a few minor gripes, though not big enough for me to downgrade my rating of the book, as I figure such are the pitfalls of self-publishing, namely some small sentence structure foibles that'd be easy to clean up via a professional editor if Dan were to ever get this book re-released via a "mainstream" publisher, namely (1) random typos here and there, (2) The sex scene that ends of p. 130 is wonderfully erotic, but the last two sentences jump back and forth between past and present tense, and (3) the author doesn't put a paragraph break in-between different characters' snippets of dialog, so it's sometimes hard to tell who's speaking, thus compelling me to re-read the dialog once or twice for clarification.
But enough nitpicking. Great job, Dan, can't wait to see more!
P.S. It's pleasing to see that in the future that Dan envisions, people don't forget about the concept of COMFORTABLE, CASUAL attire; in so many sci-fi movies and TV shows, casual attire is completely forgotten and everybody is wearing either (A) those ridiculous tights or (B) those hoity-toity Renaissance-throwback robes that look fine for a Ren Faire but NOT for what's supposed to be the freakin' FUTURE!!!!
There are also a couple of scenes that strike me as an homage to another favorite author of mine--and a Mutual Friend of both myself and Dan's--S.A. Bailey (author of "And the Rain Came Down" and "The Lines We Cross"), such as a reference to "shooting motherf*ckers in the the face" and giving a dog abuser his just desserts.
Set in the year 2117, wherein the Earth is war-torn and pretty much fully corporatized (among other things, politicians are shamelessly sponsored like sports stars) and the ever-dwindling human populace is colonizing the Moon and Mars to get away from Earthbound misery, genetically-engineered and lab-grown mercenary super-soldier and all-around badass Tyr (legal name C.8.6.9.4.2.B, eh, what a stuff formality) is blackmailed by ultra-wealthy business tycoon Erik Van Gar (who lives on the island of Montserrat, which in recent real-life history was ravaged by a devastating volcano) into killing 10 high-value "targets," i.e. people around the globe (and one off-the-globe) who have had the misfortune of being significantly associated with Van Gar and who can implicate the tycoon before he sets off his nuclear doomsday plan (or "Decimation," if you will, hence the title) against the U.S. East Coast which EVG intends to follow-up with under the guise of being America's new savior and benefactor.
How does EVG blackmail Tyr? By threatening the life (via cranial implant) of the only woman with whom Tyr has ever shared a deep emotional bond in additional to physical attraction, the ravishing, sultry, super-sexy redhead and professional thief, Ms. Kinga Ballentine. To give you an idea of just how smoking hot Kinga is, read the author's description on p. 9: ""She quickly slipped into a pair of tiny shorts barely covering the tattoo on her leg, a ring of small Santiago crosses situated high around her upper thigh, which, from a distance looked like a garter...Yes, that was her...Mid-thirties, looked mid-twenties, with the body to match, and the raging libido of a teenage boy...She had a Scottish mother and Irish father...like making a baby from semtex and dynamite." WOWZA!!
Tyr doesn't find out about Kinga's deadly Van Gar-initiated implant until after he's already rescued her from the villain's cell in a daring raid (the same one references in the 1980s analogy in the first paragraph for my review), and Tyr is severely mentally and emotionally conflicted about keeping this secret from Kinga as she assists him on his globe-and-space-trotting assassination assignments. Tyr & Kinga are also assisted by the merc's old buddy Duke, an African-American chap and former field colleague of Tyr's who's now a tech whiz and owner of a nightclub in Bangkok, Thailand (if "Decimation" were ever made into a film, methinks Craig Robinson, whoplayed Nick in "Hot Tub Time Machine," would be a good choice to portray Duke).
Mr. Webster has filled this book with non-stop, rollicking action, lots of steamy sex, and plenty of humour as well--Tyr's banter with Kinga and Duke alike produces plenty of LOL/LMAO moments. Further entertainment are furnished by Tyr's spaceship "The Reaper" (a "flying man cave," as Kinga refers to it on p. 72; hey, where can I get one of those, heh heh!), his amazing arsenal (which includes, among other things, .458 derringer, .44 Magnum Mateba revolver, and an Israeli-made .50 AE autopistol, niiiiiiice!!!) and Dave, his oh-so-kill-crazyy yet paradoxically oh-so-loving and cuddy pet leopard hybrid (based partially on Dan's real-life pet feline Dave).
Just a few minor gripes, though not big enough for me to downgrade my rating of the book, as I figure such are the pitfalls of self-publishing, namely some small sentence structure foibles that'd be easy to clean up via a professional editor if Dan were to ever get this book re-released via a "mainstream" publisher, namely (1) random typos here and there, (2) The sex scene that ends of p. 130 is wonderfully erotic, but the last two sentences jump back and forth between past and present tense, and (3) the author doesn't put a paragraph break in-between different characters' snippets of dialog, so it's sometimes hard to tell who's speaking, thus compelling me to re-read the dialog once or twice for clarification.
But enough nitpicking. Great job, Dan, can't wait to see more!
P.S. It's pleasing to see that in the future that Dan envisions, people don't forget about the concept of COMFORTABLE, CASUAL attire; in so many sci-fi movies and TV shows, casual attire is completely forgotten and everybody is wearing either (A) those ridiculous tights or (B) those hoity-toity Renaissance-throwback robes that look fine for a Ren Faire but NOT for what's supposed to be the freakin' FUTURE!!!!
March 31, 2015
My personal friend Dan Webster has written a top-notch first novel, a kicka$$ sci-fi action adventure, and I very much look forward to his 2nd and 3rd book in the series (which the About The Author page assures us are already underway)! Very much a book for present-day readers, and in some ways a nostalgic homage to 1980s action-adventure films like Schwarzenegger's "Commando": "Then, like something from a nineteen eighties action film she saw *him*." (p. 59)
There are also a couple of scenes that strike me as an homage to another favorite author of mine--and a Mutual Friend of both myself and Dan's--S.A. Bailey (author of "And the Rain Came Down" and "The Lines We Cross"), such as a reference to "shooting motherf*ckers in the the face" and giving a dog abuser his just desserts.
Set in the year 2117, wherein the Earth is war-torn and pretty much fully corporatized (among other things, politicians are shamelessly sponsored like sports stars) and the ever-dwindling human populace is colonizing the Moon and Mars to get away from Earthbound misery, genetically-engineered and lab-grown mercenary super-soldier and all-around badass Tyr (legal name C.8.6.9.4.2.B, eh, what a stuff formality) is blackmailed by ultra-wealthy business tycoon Erik Van Gar (who lives on the island of Montserrat, which in recent real-life history was ravaged by a devastating volcano) into killing 10 high-value "targets," i.e. people around the globe (and one off-the-globe) who have had the misfortune of being significantly associated with Van Gar and who can implicate the tycoon before he sets off his nuclear doomsday plan (or "Decimation," if you will, hence the title) against the U.S. East Coast which EVG intends to follow-up with under the guise of being America's new savior and benefactor.
How does EVG blackmail Tyr? By threatening the life (via cranial implant) of the only woman with whom Tyr has ever shared a deep emotional bond in additional to physical attraction, the ravishing, sultry, super-sexy redhead and professional thief, Ms. Kinga Ballentine. To give you an idea of just how smoking hot Kinga is, read the author's description on p. 9: ""She quickly slipped into a pair of tiny shorts barely covering the tattoo on her leg, a ring of small Santiago crosses situated high around her upper thigh, which, from a distance looked like a garter...Yes, that was her...Mid-thirties, looked mid-twenties, with the body to match, and the raging libido of a teenage boy...She had a Scottish mother and Irish father...like making a baby from semtex and dynamite." WOWZA!!
Tyr doesn't find out about Kinga's deadly Van Gar-initiated implant until after he's already rescued her from the villain's cell in a daring raid (the same one references in the 1980s analogy in the first paragraph for my review), and Tyr is severely mentally and emotionally conflicted about keeping this secret from Kinga as she assists him on his globe-and-space-trotting assassination assignments. Tyr & Kinga are also assisted by the merc's old buddy Duke, an African-American chap and former field colleague of Tyr's who's now a tech whiz and owner of a nightclub in Bangkok, Thailand (if "Decimation" were ever made into a film, methinks Craig Robinson, whoplayed Nick in "Hot Tub Time Machine," would be a good choice to portray Duke).
Mr. Webster has filled this book with non-stop, rollicking action, lots of steamy sex, and plenty of humour as well--Tyr's banter with Kinga and Duke alike produces plenty of LOL/LMAO moments. Further entertainment are furnished by Tyr's spaceship "The Reaper" (a "flying man cave," as Kinga refers to it on p. 72; hey, where can I get one of those, heh heh!), his amazing arsenal (which includes, among other things, .458 derringer, .44 Magnum Mateba revolver, and an Israeli-made .50 AE autopistol, niiiiiiice!!!) and Dave, his oh-so-kill-crazyy yet paradoxically oh-so-loving and cuddy pet leopard hybrid (based partially on Dan's real-life pet feline Dave).
Just a few minor gripes, though not big enough for me to downgrade my rating of the book, as I figure such are the pitfalls of self-publishing, namely some small sentence structure foibles that'd be easy to clean up via a professional editor if Dan were to ever get this book re-released via a "mainstream" publisher, namely (1) random typos here and there, (2) The sex scene that ends of p. 130 is wonderfully erotic, but the last two sentences jump back and forth between past and present tense, and (3) the author doesn't put a paragraph break in-between different characters' snippets of dialog, so it's sometimes hard to tell who's speaking, thus compelling me to re-read the dialog once or twice for clarification.
But enough nitpicking. Great job, Dan, can't wait to see more!
P.S. It's pleasing to see that in the future that Dan envisions, people don't forget about the concept of COMFORTABLE, CASUAL attire; in so many sci-fi movies and TV shows, casual attire is completely forgotten and everybody is wearing either (A) those ridiculous tights or (B) those hoity-toity Renaissance-throwback robes that look fine for a Ren Faire but NOT for what's supposed to be the freakin' FUTURE!!!!
There are also a couple of scenes that strike me as an homage to another favorite author of mine--and a Mutual Friend of both myself and Dan's--S.A. Bailey (author of "And the Rain Came Down" and "The Lines We Cross"), such as a reference to "shooting motherf*ckers in the the face" and giving a dog abuser his just desserts.
Set in the year 2117, wherein the Earth is war-torn and pretty much fully corporatized (among other things, politicians are shamelessly sponsored like sports stars) and the ever-dwindling human populace is colonizing the Moon and Mars to get away from Earthbound misery, genetically-engineered and lab-grown mercenary super-soldier and all-around badass Tyr (legal name C.8.6.9.4.2.B, eh, what a stuff formality) is blackmailed by ultra-wealthy business tycoon Erik Van Gar (who lives on the island of Montserrat, which in recent real-life history was ravaged by a devastating volcano) into killing 10 high-value "targets," i.e. people around the globe (and one off-the-globe) who have had the misfortune of being significantly associated with Van Gar and who can implicate the tycoon before he sets off his nuclear doomsday plan (or "Decimation," if you will, hence the title) against the U.S. East Coast which EVG intends to follow-up with under the guise of being America's new savior and benefactor.
How does EVG blackmail Tyr? By threatening the life (via cranial implant) of the only woman with whom Tyr has ever shared a deep emotional bond in additional to physical attraction, the ravishing, sultry, super-sexy redhead and professional thief, Ms. Kinga Ballentine. To give you an idea of just how smoking hot Kinga is, read the author's description on p. 9: ""She quickly slipped into a pair of tiny shorts barely covering the tattoo on her leg, a ring of small Santiago crosses situated high around her upper thigh, which, from a distance looked like a garter...Yes, that was her...Mid-thirties, looked mid-twenties, with the body to match, and the raging libido of a teenage boy...She had a Scottish mother and Irish father...like making a baby from semtex and dynamite." WOWZA!!
Tyr doesn't find out about Kinga's deadly Van Gar-initiated implant until after he's already rescued her from the villain's cell in a daring raid (the same one references in the 1980s analogy in the first paragraph for my review), and Tyr is severely mentally and emotionally conflicted about keeping this secret from Kinga as she assists him on his globe-and-space-trotting assassination assignments. Tyr & Kinga are also assisted by the merc's old buddy Duke, an African-American chap and former field colleague of Tyr's who's now a tech whiz and owner of a nightclub in Bangkok, Thailand (if "Decimation" were ever made into a film, methinks Craig Robinson, whoplayed Nick in "Hot Tub Time Machine," would be a good choice to portray Duke).
Mr. Webster has filled this book with non-stop, rollicking action, lots of steamy sex, and plenty of humour as well--Tyr's banter with Kinga and Duke alike produces plenty of LOL/LMAO moments. Further entertainment are furnished by Tyr's spaceship "The Reaper" (a "flying man cave," as Kinga refers to it on p. 72; hey, where can I get one of those, heh heh!), his amazing arsenal (which includes, among other things, .458 derringer, .44 Magnum Mateba revolver, and an Israeli-made .50 AE autopistol, niiiiiiice!!!) and Dave, his oh-so-kill-crazyy yet paradoxically oh-so-loving and cuddy pet leopard hybrid (based partially on Dan's real-life pet feline Dave).
Just a few minor gripes, though not big enough for me to downgrade my rating of the book, as I figure such are the pitfalls of self-publishing, namely some small sentence structure foibles that'd be easy to clean up via a professional editor if Dan were to ever get this book re-released via a "mainstream" publisher, namely (1) random typos here and there, (2) The sex scene that ends of p. 130 is wonderfully erotic, but the last two sentences jump back and forth between past and present tense, and (3) the author doesn't put a paragraph break in-between different characters' snippets of dialog, so it's sometimes hard to tell who's speaking, thus compelling me to re-read the dialog once or twice for clarification.
But enough nitpicking. Great job, Dan, can't wait to see more!
P.S. It's pleasing to see that in the future that Dan envisions, people don't forget about the concept of COMFORTABLE, CASUAL attire; in so many sci-fi movies and TV shows, casual attire is completely forgotten and everybody is wearing either (A) those ridiculous tights or (B) those hoity-toity Renaissance-throwback robes that look fine for a Ren Faire but NOT for what's supposed to be the freakin' FUTURE!!!!
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