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The Atomic Sea #2

The Atomic Sea: Volume Two

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Epic adventure in a strange world by bestselling author Jack Conner.

A thousand years ago, the sea began to change, and the change spread. Now the boiling, toxic, lightning-wreathed Atomic Sea has encompassed every ocean on the planet, and the creatures that live in it have become mutated and unnatural. The sea's taint can infect any human who comes in contact with it or with unprocessed seafood, killing them . . . or altering them. No one knows why the sea has become this way or what it portends, only that it's irrevocably changed the world.

Meanwhile, world war has erupted, and the small country of Ghenisa, like many others, is tottering on the brink of collapse under the onslaught of the Empire of Octung. Dr. Francis Avery, a middle-aged widower, is aboard a military whaling ship far out on the Atomic Sea when a series of murders onboard propels him down the rabbit-hole of danger and terror unlike any other.

Soon he becomes aware of a spy on the ship, but that's just the beginning. With the help of the grizzled whaler Janx and a mysterious woman named Layanna, he will embark on an epic quest to save Ghenisa from Octung and unravel the secrets of the Atomic Sea.

This is the second volume of a multi-volume saga of adventure and high stakes in an awe-inspiring world unlike any you've ever seen before. Welcome to the world of the Atomic Sea.

452 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2014

66 people are currently reading
103 people want to read

About the author

Jack Conner

84 books91 followers
Raised in Austin, Texas, Jack Conner is the bestselling author of the Black Tower Trilogy. He's an ardent fan of fantasy, horror and weird fiction, and writes them all. He's lived all over the United States and has traveled across the world, but recently he's moved back to his beloved Austin.

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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
Profile Image for Susan.
1,735 reviews39 followers
July 24, 2016
Note: This is Volume 2 in the series and I feel this is a series best read in sequence. Volume 1 is freaking awesome but it also gives you a good basis for the characters’s motives in Volume 2

I so very much enjoyed Book 1 and then got distracted by life and other books. But I am very glad to be back in the world of the Atomic Sea. Vol. 1 set the stage with the war and the messed up oceans and the tainted people. An unlikely group forms – they aren’t quite all friends but they do all have some shared enemies. Now in this volume we will learn more about the motives behind the war, about what exactly created the Atomic Sea, and about how little chance they actually have of saving their beleaguered world.

Dr. Avery is still alive and kicking and he, the mysterious Layanna (who was pulled whole from the sea in Vol. 1), and their new odd friends (Muirblog, Janx, Simon, Hildra, and Byron) are just hanging out on a mountainside trying to plan their next move when they see a flying ray (possibly hunting them) in the distance. Yet before they can move out, the Mikvandi attack. They’ve got fish faces and weapons, so you know Avery will probably be having nightmares. Layanna in her weird Cthulu-amoeba-like form saves them only to have the Mikvandi declare her one of their gods (one of the Minuthra) and insist on escorting her to the other gods. Layanna is amenable to going with them because she believes the Minuthra will have an active altar, which is a kind of other dimensional portal. She wishes to contact her friends for very secret reasons which she reveals later in the book and which would be spoilery to chat about in detail here.

Things don’t go as planned and the whole lot of them make an escape attempt. Only some of them get out on a dirigible but they have a direction to go and a quest that they adopt because if they don’t then what hope do they have? Layanna needs another active altar and the crew need answers. Layanna can only give them some but they are kind of mind blowing. It’s all kinds of wonderful messed up.

So if I tell you more of the plot, I will be in spoiler land, so I won’t. In broad strokes, I just thoroughly enjoyed this book every bit as much as Vol. 1. If you eat tainted meat from the Atomic Sea, you start getting these weird fishy mutations – and no one has pinned down a predictable trend (will it be gills and bulging eyes or shark skin and a spiny mohawk?) nor a real way to cure it. So we have these humans who have managed to stay all human, such as Dr. Avery, and then you have humans who had no choice but to eat tainted fish to survive and have these fishy attributes (like our big warrior Janx), and then you got Layanna who can have a human form or her other dimensional Cthulu-like form. I just love all the clashes and chances for odd friendships this causes in the book.

One of my favorite, possibly amoral, characters from Vol. 1, Cpt. Sheridan, returns in this book but not till perhaps half way through. I’m glad she’s back on scene because she adds some real angst to the sometimes emo Dr. Avery. These two bounce off each other in ways that highlight both Avery’s humanity and Sheridan’s coldness.

Then there’s the human sacrifices and the Minuthra gods and dirigibles and giant caverns that house whole cities. It’s like HP Lovecraft and Jules Verne got together and had a baby and named that baby Jack Conner who gave us The Atomic Sea series. We got adventure, a touch of guttural terror, the fear of the unknown, things way larger than you messing with your life, and good people stuck in bad situations. Yeah. It’s that good.

I was provided this audiobook at no charge from the narrator in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks!

The Narration: Ray Greenley did a great job with Vol. 1 and he continues to do so with Vol. 2. He does amazingly well with all the distorted fish voices. He makes Sheridan sound ice-cold but then he can switch to the emo Dr. Avery in the same conversation, back and forth multiple times, without missing a beat. Excellent performance.
Profile Image for David Pospisil.
618 reviews4 followers
September 4, 2020
Some amazing scenes throughout this book including the underground train tunnels, rotting flesh city, and the over city.
Character development was great. I hate the evil Sheridan and want her killed at the beginning of book 3 which I am looking forward to.
Profile Image for Barry Edstene.
530 reviews3 followers
April 3, 2020
Conner keeps the excitement going, and volume 2 is great. Seamless transition from first book. Best if read in order.
Profile Image for Matt Kelland.
Author 4 books9 followers
August 18, 2020
More Mieville meets Lovecraft adventure. Lots of plot, lots of wild imagination, and characters who are frustratingly obstinate and stupid at times.
Profile Image for Jmatus.
22 reviews
November 14, 2024
The Engine of Ruin

It’s gets a 4 star because I was sick of the ongoing battle between Avery and Sheridan. I dislike children used as pawns. Otherwise a good book.
3 reviews
March 28, 2025
It is a really good story

I am enjoying this series more than I expected. A few things seemed unnecessary, but overall, it is a good series.
1,420 reviews1 follower
Read
July 19, 2022
scary quest

Rating: 0

I wanted to compare my reactions to others but as usual, I could not access other reviews in order to balance my own. I do not know if this is a symptom of poor system maintenance, a breakdown of the architecture (storage , etc) or much like the masking of the id's of my commenters, is specific to my searches.

To see the full picture of my experiences on the site, please read my review of "Dark Horse", a fine story by Diener or Powers of the Earth (a pathetic book) and the commenters especially Claes Rees, Jr/cgr710 (a self-identified NeoNazi).

GLORY TO UKRAINE !!!!

This was not a bad book, especially compared to Amazon's usual fare but I was overloaded by the number and types of monsters coming onto the page nonstop. It created a continuous crisis that did not allow me the opportunity to stop and enjoy the poisoned scenery. There is so much action that I found myself focusing on the main character's flaws, wondering when his decisions would cause the death of all his companions.

He fits the world that he inhabits but the constant chase wore me down. I read some Lovecraft a long time ago and his horror had the same effect on me. The characters are being absorbed by the plot, not illuminated through it. It's definitely a wild, dark story but not easy to follow and it became difficult to maintain a connection with the characters.

The descriptions, general language use and dialogue were superior to all of the low effort books that are the bulk of Amazon's catalogue. Reading this book caused me to wonder at the horrible writing that publishers are producing though. The "space operas" (whatever that is) and the military fantasies are overtly political narratives written without any knowledge of the current scientific consensus, real world naval/military organizations, tactics and weapon systems, the actual workings and roles of state power, the clash of classes and the real use of the military in the realms of the geopolitical/economic and the maintenance of internal power structures of the society.

I think that speculative fiction's purpose now is to depress critical thinking and dull imagination. There is/was a real social value to this genre family and currently that value has been replaced by support of the status quo under the guise of a mindless entertainment vehicle. The books are supposedly not political but the reader who questions them certainly is (?). Unfortunately the US is neither the first nor the only country that has weaponized fiction.

I have moved towards science fiction that is at least better written, whether the upper tier authors or the better movies and TV found on the streaming services. Always starting at Netflix of course. Done with the nasty membership of Goodreads' science fiction corner (arbiters apparently of a genre that they do not themselves understand), I turn to the more serious readers of the YouTube book channels. The communities created there are thoughtful and excited by books of all categories, I recommend giving them a look through. Some of my favorite channels are.

Eleanor Morton, Munecat, Novara Media, Beautifully Bookish Bethany, Tara Mooknee, Some More News, Mythology and Fiction Explained, Then & Now, The Shades of Orange, Chugging Along, Boat Time, Ship Happens, Sabine Hossenfelder, May Moon Narrowboat, Traveling K, Tibees, Tulia, Celtica, The Juice Media, Mrs Betty Bower, Dr Becky, Ana Psychology, Joe Scott, Books with Chloe, Emmie, Alice Cappelle, Alize, France 24, 2Cellos, Cover in French, Double Down News, Jack in the Books, Hello Future Me, Lady of the Library, Owen Jones, Useful Idiots, Krystal Ball, Natalia Tsarikova, Tom Nicholas, Scott Manley, Real Engineering, Sort of Interesting, Adult Wednesday Addams, The Piano Boat, Tiny Wee Boat, Swell Entertainment, The Juice Media, Physics Girl, The Armchair Historian, Crecganford, IzzzYzzz, Jabzy, The Great War, Military Aviation History, Tank Archives, Ancient Americas, Invicta, History of the Earth, World War Two, Atun Shei, Casual Navigation, What Vivi did next, Kosmo, Eileen, Karolina Zebrowska, Jill Bearup, Rebecca Watson, Jessica Gagnon, Weir on the move, Camper Vibe, The Mindful Narrowboat, Northern Narrowboaters, Practical Engineering, Ask a Mortician, Olly Richards, Books and Lala, Lilly's expat life, Prime of Midlife, The European, Book Odyssey, Medieval Madness, Philosophy Tube, Elena Taber, Diane Callahan Quotidian Writer, Sarah Z, Jake Tran, Odyssey, Trek Culture, Spacedock, The Templin, Denys Davydov, Storyworldling, Alina Gingertail, Linguoer-Mechanic, MWG Studios, Alexandra Roselyn, Abbie Emmons, Books and Quills, With Olivia, I'm Rosa, Vlad Vexler, Overly Sarcastic Productions, The Piano Guys, Jacobin.

I wish you a gorgeous morning, a fantastic afternoon, a pleasant evening and a splendid night.

Without Empathy and introspection, there is no human.
Observations, Thirteenth Route Trade Fleet
Profile Image for Robert Defrank.
Author 6 books15 followers
May 25, 2015
Into the wilds

The story begun in the first volume of The Atomic Sea here picks up as a small but stalwart band of former rogues led by Dr. Avery continue their quest to stop the forces of the Octunggen Empire from overwhelming all the world in the service of the eldritch beings from beyond that the empire worships. This complicated by the fact that high-level traitors in Avery’s own country have declared him an enemy of the state and hunt them with advanced and otherworldly weapons.
Their hope is in the cleverness and tenacity of Avery and his comrades, including one such eldritch entity in human form who has thrown her lot in with humanity.

This steampunk fantasy horror show follows our heroes in a hijacked dirigible dodging giant flying manta rays controlled by psychics, squadrons of biplanes and other monstrosities. They are driven into subterranean realms ruled by feral mutants and come face-to-face with the god-kings these mutants worship.

All the while, the villainous Admiral Sheridan continues a relentless pursuit of the heroes, showing very understandable and human evil as a counterpoint to monstrous and mutant antagonists, and new surprises are revealed in every chapter.

Overall, the series continues as an excellent example of using the heroic quest to showcase some exceptional worldbuilding. The characters continue to act and react like real people would when encountering these unearthly events. The only slip I saw was in Avery’s reactions on entering the god-emperor’s palace. That seemed a bit heavy handed, but readers will eagerly devour the pages to see what will happen next.

Profile Image for D.
309 reviews11 followers
September 24, 2016
A great sequel to the The Atomic Sea: Volume One
The dark world created by Jack Conner gets even deeper, more dangerous and creepier.
The desperate run to win the war take twists and turns as some secrets are revealed and the survival of humanity is at stake. The story grows darker and escalate in tension, there are some bizarre moments though, like the mess in the palace hall, could have done without.
The main characters are credible, some times being fun, some times serious, some times angry, scared, very human overall. Janx being probably everyone's favorite.
Expecting good things in The Atomic Sea: Volume Three

11 reviews
April 13, 2017
Just as riotous and full throttle as the first in this series, book two of the Atomic Sea picks up right where the the last volume left off and continues developing the story without experiencing any loss.

Like book one, this is not a stand alone and will be difficult to follow for those who haven't read the first in the series. That being said, each volume is very concise in the portion of plot it seeks to convey, and this book had a clearer sense of conclusion than the first book did. The story stops in a logical spot and welcomes a break--that is, things feel more "resolved" this time around; there's a sense of achievement--but is still engaging enough to encourage continued reading into part three.
Profile Image for Chris.
139 reviews7 followers
March 6, 2015
Avery and his fellow band of adventurers continue on with Layanna to find the alter so that Layanna can send the plans to the 'Device' to the Black Sect so that it can be built and defeat the 'Collossum'. In my review of Book 1 I stated that I didn't think this was earth however, there are so many references to earthlike items, cars, trains, subways, airplanes and so on I'm beginning to think it's an earth far flung into the future or a planet that has had somewhat of a parallel evolution to earth. Either way this was a fantastic follow on to the first book and again Jack Conner has a winner. I can't wait to read book 3 I'm sure it will be as full of adventure as the first two.
Profile Image for Pamela.
209 reviews35 followers
June 1, 2015
This is the secod part of The Atomic Sea Volume One, and it'a the a story of a new and different world from the one we know, a completely different one. This part is as well full of adventures, spread with humans, no humans, aliens, mutants, and of course an atomic sea where amazing creatures live and have transform onto others creatures, besides we will know that it is not the sea it is also rivers.
This is a good second part of the story, you will like it. I already want to read the third part.
Profile Image for Brian.
329 reviews19 followers
August 5, 2016
This book was quite good. It picks up where Book 1 left off and takes the reader on the continuing journey through a crazy future world, possibly a future earth, where outside forces in the form of alien entities, who where god-like to the inhabitants. These aliens tried changing the people, and the world, to fit there needs.

There is a lot going on in this book and the author has made strong headway in giving the reader the information needed about characters, actions, and the world.

This book was a great improvement from Book 1 and I plan to read Book 3.

24 reviews
September 8, 2015
I enjoyed this book tremendously. it is a must read.
please see my complete review on amazon.com

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews

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