Nighthawks at the Mission

by Forbes West

The Oberon is the only place one can still find the American Dream alive and well. Thousands of settlers from America have come to live in this mysterious land accessed only by an energy portal in the South Pacific. The settlers are there to mine orichalcum- a mineral that can give even the casual user magical powers - and to reap the strange high tech salvage that litters the dead cities of an extinct human civilization.

Sarah Orange, a young and troubled girl from Southern California, is one of those settlers. Facing a futureless existence in modern day America and betrayed by her long time boyfriend, Sarah takes off to The Oberon and falls in with a group of illegal salvagers that operate in the dead cities only at night. Facing death, betrayal, and the heavy hand of her corporate overseers as well as the murderous hatred of the alien Oberon natives that live a medieval existence, Sarah searches for love and money in a world so close to- and yet so different from- our very own.

327 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 9, 2013

Reviews

[Leiah Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay Hunter S. Thompson. Keep up with me.

An Adderall and alcohol fueled, dangerous dream of a novel, in a nightmarish paean to Waits and Kerouac, Burgess and Kubrick, Forbes paints a LSD fueled journey down the rabbit-hole with his stunning brilliance of imagery, drowning in surreal pageantry. He drags you, literally, into a different world, a world of multi-coloured dragons and breathtaking vistas, where nothing is ever what it seems. Or is it?

Forbes’ prose is brilliant, a searchlight reaching across a blasted land. Sandpaper sliding across exposed nerve endings, the frisson of dread before the beast of the night explodes from on high. The smell of carrion upon the night wind, sliding across the senses. As Michael Bunker puts it, (http://alturl.com/v78g3) Nighthawks at the Mission is "an epic, fantasy, sci-fi, tour-de-force." I don’t know whether to hug Michael or hit him – his review of Nighthawks is everything I wished to say about the novel. Drat him, anyway, for stealing my thunder! (Yes, I now have a crush on him for reaching into my soul . . .)

Visualize, please, a world of seven moons. A world of light and storms, of death and life carried out on an unimaginable scale. A world where nothing, and everything is, and is not, what it seems. Nighthawks reads like the bastard offspring of A Clockwork Orange and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls." All consumed on the deck of the Queen Mary as she sails towards a new and shocking world of dreams and illusion.

Not everyone is going to love this book as I do. It is a twisted and bacchanalian view into a quirky, funky and totally surreal mind, a mind not everyone will enjoy or appreciate. Pity. If you require all the little bunny-rabbits to have lovely, silky brown fur, don’t bother. These bunnies have brilliantly coloured fur, warping and twisting through serpentine mirrors, razor-sharp teeth reaching out through blood-stained maws. They are shockingly alive, reaching into your mind to dazzle and tease, leaving you breathless and dazed, deep beneath the sea of darkness within your own mind.

And the tail-lights dissolve, in the coming of night, and the questions in thousands take flight…

Very, very highly recommended – buy the ticket, and take the ride, a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label and a vat of colourful pills by your side . . .

[Bob Boze · Rating 1 out of 5]

This review is written by Bob Boze on behalf of Truth About Books

Nighthawks at the Mission is listed under Dark Fantasy: And Dark it truly is.

Dark in the sense that if killing, drinking, betraying friends, doing drugs, stealing, blowing things up and not caring much about anything excites you than, this is your book.

Once again I find myself in total disagreement with other reviewers over a fantasy book. And, the first one to give a one-star rating. Why? Well, I guess I look for different things in a book than they do. I look for originality in the story line, characters I can relate to, understand and feel for and, events that lead (eventually) to some kind of a conclusion or point. (None of which this book had; except for a trite conclusion at the end that you could see coming miles away.)

What I don’t like is just throwing in whatever crap you can think of as your writing and call it a story. (Which is what this book consists mainly of.)

There is some originality to this story in the beginning. This would be where our MC (Sarah Orange) takes the Queen Mary out of Long Beach and sails off the end of the earth and into the Off-World of Oberon. There ends originality and starts the let’s mention; everything we’ve ever seen or heard in sci-fi TV shows, movies, punk, heavy metal, rock and roll, steampunk, and on and on and on.

All this, while killing people (Including your friends), creatures of various types but not very well described, destroying everything in your path and blowing things up, healing the people and creatures you just killed or blew apart (So, why did you kill them in the first place? Search me?) oh, and stealing as your primary source of income.

WOW! What a mouth full! But, that pretty much reflects how the story just rambles on and on and on making little sense. (Unless your drinking, a lot, and/or using drugs along with our characters. Even then, I doubt it will help.) (The two six packs of beer I consumed didn’t help me at all. Or maybe that’s why my review is so bad?)

I apologize for being so harsh. As an author I really want to be supportive and constructive in my reviews. But, I also have to be fair in my ratings. Fair to the other authors who expend effort to create a unique story, develop their characters and make things believable. (Even in fantasy. Actually, especially in fantasy.) Very little of which I found here.

My rating: A real struggle to get through and make sense of and I question if it’s worth the effort.

[Charla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things are not as they seem . . . or are they?
I constantly asked myself that question while reading Nighthawks at the Mission. It's both the best and worst thing about reading this book. I loved that I had to think and try to figure things out, but I hated not knowing exactly what was going on. And forget about being able to predict what’s going to happen next. It’s not possible. Don’t believe me? Read it.
The narrative is ripe with misdirection. Seemingly minor characters, not included in immediate action, have huge roles in the overall scheme of things. It’s filled with hundreds of clues essential to the big picture, but they’re hidden among seemingly insignificant details. The connections are there at the periphery of your mind, kind of like knowing the answer to a question but not being able to recall it at that exact moment. Not everything makes sense, but it's fascinating nonetheless. Thank goodness for the search feature of my kindle. It allowed me to go back to certain words, reread, and try to put the pieces together: active reading at its best.
I value art, imagination, creativity, and the confidence to be genuine and different. That's what this book is to me. Although I can't love it in a mainstream sense, I love it for the author's conviction to put it out for all to see.
Sometimes I get sick of being middle of the road, mainstream, and traditional. Books like this help me to believe I'm not. That's a concept I love.
If you enjoy writing that forces you to become an active reader, you may like this book. I did.
P.S. – The second person point of view almost had me quit this book, but it was too interesting to stop reading. As I got more into the story, the POV faded into the background. Thanks for taking a few chances, Mr. West. It was worth it.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

If someone said to me, “Hey, read this amazing book. It’s written in 2nd person POV—” I’d stop them right there. Then I’d say “No thanks. I hate reading 2nd person POV, because it makes my brain melt.” I’m glad I didn’t know what POV “Nighthawks at the Mission” was written in, because my judgy jerk attitude would have caused me to miss out on a truly awesome book.

A short summary: This is a futuristic story in which settlers from the U.S. have come to live in The Oberon (Off-World). It is a land that is accessed by an energy portal in the South Pacific. Once there, the settlers mine orichalcum- a mineral that can give people magical powers.

You are Sarah Orange, and you have settled in The Oberon. And the adventure begins, although the previous chapters introducing you to yourself are extremely entertaining and you should read them.
I forgot about POV after the first page, drawn into the insane (and very cool) world created by the author. The vivid descriptions of people (or not-people) and settings is pretty damn impressive. Sometimes a reader feels she’s stepped into the mind of a nutcase, but not in a bad way. The Oberon is a bleak, and sometimes deadly place that floats somewhere between sci-fi and fantasy.

This book isn’t for folks who don’t like to think while they read. While it seems like just a fun ride on the surface, West creeps inside your brain with each detail and forces you to try to figure out what he’s telling you. I’m not sure I have, so I’m going to read it again.

[Eamon Ambrose · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing is sharp and funny oozing with pop culture references and sci-fi shenaniganism. Shades of Hunter S. Thompson flirt effortlessly with undertones of Lewis Carroll, while squeezing in a closing time drunken tango with Tom Waits.

West’s World (pardon the pun) is well-crafted and does it’s best to be practical while embracing the more supernatural elements of the alien world, it’s population and the means to travel there. Sometimes it’s an uneasy marriage between the two, with the supernatural element providing a quick fix or an easy way out of some seemingly impossible situations but in most cases it works. Rather than being some Avatar-like fantasy planet The Oberon is a bleak, dangerous and mysterious model of inhospitality and it’s inhabitants while tolerating the human settlers, clearly despise them.

This book won’t be to everyone’s taste but that’s a good thing. West playfully pokes a cheeky finger in the eye of recent Young Adult fiction by showing what would be the more realistic outcome of a teenager finding themselves put in this situation and by portraying a deeply flawed and selfish character who rather than being a clean cut hero, makes some terrible decisions, trusts some pretty shady characters while doing her best to dig herself out of the monumentally large hole she has dug for herself. It’s a tricky but ultimately enjoyable read and a welcome break from the sci-fi norm.

[Forbes West · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's my book so yeah it's cool.

[SylviaV · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like to read and like discovering new to me authors that tell a great story.
I choose to read this book because of the good reviews and I was prepared to read an interesting story that was maybe a bit out there.
I could not finish it. I stopped at chapter 7.
The story premise was interesting, but I never felt invested in the fate of the characters, so after a couple of hours reading, I cut my losses and shelved this under DNF. Did Not Finish.
Maybe it got better, but I could not be bothered to find out.

[Merrill Chapman · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are four main perspectives used in writing novels. The first person, the second, and the third (the most popular). Third can be sub catgorized into single, POV, and the omniscient, but I'll save my schoolmarm shtick for another day.

In the first person, you share the protagonist's thoughts and feelings, becoming in a sense their best friend for the length of the story. In the third person, you view the story and become part of an intimate audience. In the second person, you become the protagonist. Writing in the second voice is the trickiest task in writing, because your story must be compelling enough for your reader to be comfortable in the skin of the character they're going to be inhabiting. Think of the second person as "The Thing" of novel writing.

Both of my novels (Rule-Set and Selling Steve Jobs' Liver are written in the first person and my future literary itinerary calls for me to write one in the third. I'm not sure I'll ever write one in the second. There are a few examples of recent successful books written in the second voice, including Bright Lights, Big City and A Prayer for the Dying. In Sci-Fi, Ray Bradbury liked to experiment with the second person, but I don't think any of his novels use it.

This brings us to Forbes West's Nighthawks at the Mission, which is decidedly written in the second person. So, the first question we must ask is: Does he pull it off?

The answer is yes. West creates a compelling, cracked world that's fits the peculiar power of the second voice beautifully. The novel reads like what would happen if Jack Kerouac's On the Road took a left turn into Mordor at some point and ended up employed at a meth lab run by the Dark Lord. Visually, the world the author creates "feels" (and I use that word because Forbes West's prose has a very visceral quality) as if someone had poured a Dali landscape into a de Chirico street scene.

The plot of the story revolves around Sarah, who departs Earth via a refurbished Queen Mary, for The Oberon, an "off world" destination that is reached not via space ship but by passing through a dimensional portal located in the Pacific Ocean. The book does not explain the origins of The Oberon nor why thousands of people are emigrating to a place whose senior executive is called "The Witch-Lord," but never mind. You're on your way and will just have to puzzle it all out while you learn how to survive. The drugs, alcohol, and side trips to ancient structures that are described as "temples" but feel like long abandoned shopping malls, now infested with ancient insane human vampires, shoppers who stayed picking over the Blue Light Specials a bit too long while all the stores were being shuttered, will help keep boredom away. If by chance you're chased by one of the vampires, you can pray to survive, but don't recite from the Bible while doing it; those are illegal in The Oberon.

The following passage gives you a sense for the book's style and ever evolving weirdness:

You and Guy come upon a massive hallway with statues of two-headed men and of otherwise normal-looking women with fangs for teeth. The ceiling stretches upward, the vaulted roof and
tiled floor separated by a hundred feet of air. You feel like you are in one of those documentaries about the Vatican due to the Urncalles’ ancient and positively Greco-Roman look. Farther along is a corridor where purple water travels quickly upward on a slant with nothing supporting its trajectory, just open air.

A few young men and women in bathing suits and equipped with those ring-shaped life preservers are jumping into the pool and shooting upwards, disappearing into some area beyond in a rush of ever continuing water. A Ni-Perchta man, tall and imposing, guards the entrance to the water arc with a whistle tied around his neck.

I imagine this is the type of water park attraction Milton's fallen angels might have created while laying down the foundations of Hell.

Looking for something different? Want to kick your mind onto a very different plane? Tired of the same old, same old?

Nighthawks at the Mission and The Oberon await you.

[Charla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genuine, Original, and Creative: Mystery Cloaked in a Science Fiction Action Story

Things are not as they seem . . . or are they?
I constantly asked myself that question while reading Nighthawks at the Mission. It's both the best and worst thing about reading this book. I loved that I had to think and try to figure things out, but I hated not knowing exactly what was going on. And forget about being able to predict what’s going to happen next. It’s not possible. Don’t believe me? Read it.

The narrative is ripe with misdirection. Seemingly minor characters, not included in immediate action, have huge roles in the overall scheme of things. It’s filled with hundreds of clues essential to the big picture, but they’re hidden among seemingly insignificant details. The connections are there at the periphery of your mind, kind of like knowing the answer to a question but not being able to recall it at that exact moment. Not everything makes sense, but it's fascinating nonetheless. Thank goodness for the search feature of my kindle. It allowed me to go back to certain words, reread, and try to put the pieces together: active reading at its best.

I value art, imagination, creativity, and the confidence to be genuine and different. That's what this book is to me. Although I can't love it in a mainstream sense, I love it for the author's conviction to put it out for all to see.

Sometimes I get sick of being middle of the road, mainstream, and traditional. Books like this help me to believe I'm not. That's a concept I love.

If you enjoy writing that forces you to become an active reader, you may like this book. I did.

P.S. – The second person point of view almost had me quit this book, but it was too interesting to stop reading. As I got more into the story, the POV faded into the background. Thanks for taking a few chances, Mr. West. It was worth it.

[Rob McClellan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bottom line up front: I loved this book.

“Nighthawks At The Mission” takes the familiar tropes of portal fantasy and YA fiction and turns them completely on their head. Then shoots them. Execution style. While wearing a ragged motorcycle jacket and scuffed boots.

The story starts out familiar enough, with young Sarah unhappy with her low paying life in an America slouching towards corporate dystopia. But, there’s a strange portal out in the ocean that offers life in another world, The Oberon, a fantastic world with dark magic and mystical creatures. So, she boards the boat and heads out, like-minded semi-boyfriend in tow.

Sounds a like the premise for just about every female led, dystopian YA adventure serial. But, once in the Oberon, the author throws that premise to the dogs. Literally.

Sarah dumps the tool semi-boyfriend, gets caught up with a bad crowd, and starts to make some terrible life decisions, all while being unwillingly dragged into a dual planet revolution.

In the YA Dystopian Fantasies, the hero is always beautiful, noble, and unerringly right. Somehow, at a young age, their terrible upbringing provides an unnatural clarity of justice and a supernatural charisma and leadership. Which we all know is ridiculous.

Sarah is not that person. Sarah is real. She is 18. She screws up – a lot. She can be selfish, cowardly, and confused. But, at her core, she’s a good person who wants to do good things. She’s not a fake hero – she’s authentic. And I found that incredibly refreshing.

The Oberon may be a fantasy, but this story is as real as it gets. And definitely worth reading.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

*I was given a copy of this book by the author as the host of an online radio show about indie books.*

I was initially surprised by the 2nd person point of view that this book was written in, but I soon grew to appreciate it as a way of drawing me into an unusual story. The author weaves a tale that can only be described as fantastic. In many ways, I felt almost like I was reading the script of an incredible sci-fi fantasy movie. The off-world is well described, but not overly so. A good balance of description and plenty left to the imagination. Over and over again, I did a mental 'double-take' while reading the book. These "WAIT, WHAT!?" moments kept me guessing right up to the end. I do hope there is a sequel, as I believe room was left for at least one. If you are looking for something that's off the beaten path, give this one a try.

*If you would like to find out more about this book and the author, check out his appearance on my show:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/indieboo...

[Stefano · Rating 5 out of 5]

When this novel came out in June, I got an enthusiast message, about a new novel, from one of my tweeps on Twitter, a guy that has a good taste for SciFi and is not easily impressed. I was a bit skeptical at first but then I bought it and even if my TBR list is huge I read it before some mainstream titles I had planned for the summer season.
Well, I am glad I did.
There is really some genius in here. The plot is intriguing and crazy enough to keep you turning pages (at least metaphorically being an ebook). The world building is fascinating and you will ask yourself which kind of medical drugs the author is using to describe such vivid offworld locations.
I wonder if Forbes West is a real person or is just the penname of some famous writer.
This might not be everyone's cup of tea but if you are looking for something new in the SciFi scene, sample this book before buying it, you will not regret.
Being a series I really hope the author will write the sequel soon.

[Colby · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first couple of chapters of Nighthawks had me a little worried. The second person perspective had me waiting for the opportunity to choose my own adventure. It hit a groove pretty quick though, and I couldn't put it down. It was part Hunter S. Thompson, both manic and bizarre, and part Heinlein, awe-inspiring world building and character development. Nothing is impossible Off-World. I spent two chapters hoping I could make it to the end, and the rest of the book hoping it wouldn't end too soon. This work is fantastic, and another example of a writer doing something new. I have never read anything like Nighthawks before, but I certainly hope to read more like it again. Get to work, Forbes. There is more of Off-World to be explored, and I sincerely hope you will be our guide for another episode.

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was not thrilled with the book's styling and descriptive language, nor the plot. It has great potential but does not convey the image of the "other world" very well. Descriptors are lacking and do not seem to be intentionally lacking (not for imagination's sake), and in addition, various sentences are repeated, almost word for word, but are never connected throughout the story, making it seem as if it were not intentional. Lastly, it is written in second-person, which is not typically seen in novels, and I saw no effect or purpose of it in this case either. Bottom recommendation: Read Divergent again.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving this a 3.5. It's just not my cup of tea. The 2nd person point of view just does not capture my attention and I find it disturbing. And since it's supposed to be one of those 'other world' novels, I was expecting a nice version of other world, bit I didn't quite get the feel of the other world. It feels two-dimensional to me. But that's just me. On the bright side, the story has a good plot.

[Ceh131973 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book free in return for a review.

[Nighthawks at the Mission] by [Forbes West] is a modern day explorer/exploiter story. I feel there was a political statement about colonialism within the novel. It was an interesting read and would have received a higher rating if the characters were more consistent but they all seemed to have multi-personality disorder. I would also like to know more about her sister.

[Colette Chadwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books like this is why I love Sci-Fi… the only limit is the writer’s imagination. This is very well written. A crazy whirlwind plot that is action packed, intriguing, and some very frightening moments. All that and laced with humor. I truly enjoyed this adventure and look forward to reading more of this story and more from this author.

[Jay Meunier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic!

Really enjoyed this one. Bizarre, engrossing, and fast-paced. The short stories at the end were a perfect cap to a great read.