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Rockaway
Freedom fighter Lexi is traumatized by the horrors she has experienced at the hands of the sinister Corporation. Yet she remains hell-bent on halting the Endings, an insidious, AI-powered killing spree aimed at the over-70s.
With troubled youth and people with disabilities next in line for extinction, Lexi and her activist friends turn up the heat. But the powerful have too much to lose. When the resistance unleashes daring new tactics to derail the genocide, they find themselves in greater danger than they ever thought possible.
Rockaway is the third book in the chillingly plausible Rockstar Ending series, steeped in the social and political dilemmas that dominate the 2020s. The novels blend glimmers of dark humor with acutely observed cultural references and include a playlist of the songs that run through the story.
If you enjoy dystopian fiction such as Black Mirror, The Handmaid’s Tale, or Nineteen Eighty-Four the Rockstar Ending series is for you.
This is speculative fiction at its very best, thrilling and fearless – David Walton
Highly original, macabre and very funny – Richard Blair
All all-too persuasive vision of the future – The Idler
NOW IN DEVELOPMENT FOR TELEVISION
With troubled youth and people with disabilities next in line for extinction, Lexi and her activist friends turn up the heat. But the powerful have too much to lose. When the resistance unleashes daring new tactics to derail the genocide, they find themselves in greater danger than they ever thought possible.
Rockaway is the third book in the chillingly plausible Rockstar Ending series, steeped in the social and political dilemmas that dominate the 2020s. The novels blend glimmers of dark humor with acutely observed cultural references and include a playlist of the songs that run through the story.
If you enjoy dystopian fiction such as Black Mirror, The Handmaid’s Tale, or Nineteen Eighty-Four the Rockstar Ending series is for you.
This is speculative fiction at its very best, thrilling and fearless – David Walton
Highly original, macabre and very funny – Richard Blair
All all-too persuasive vision of the future – The Idler
NOW IN DEVELOPMENT FOR TELEVISION
312 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 8, 2022
8 people want to read
About the author
N.A. Rossi
4 books8 followersN. A. (Nicola) Rossi has lived in London most of her life, moving there from the seaside town of Southport in the early ‘80s.
After university she flirted briefly with journalism, and then began a 30-year career in communications management, eventually running international teams for big technology companies.
In 2017 she was awarded an MA in Digital Media from Goldsmiths University. That was when the trouble began. She started to write about surveillance, data ownership, consent and the potential for people to be manipulated without their knowledge.
Her debut novel, Rockstar Ending, started life as a short story, ‘One Last Gift’, which won a dystopian fiction award from the Orwell Society. The judges described it as ‘highly original, macabre and very funny’. It was published in the Journal of Orwell Studies.
By January 2022, Nicola will have published another two full length books in the Rockstar Ending series, Rock On and Rockaway, in addition to the prequel novella, For Those About to Rock.
In September 2021 Free@Last TV announced that they had acquired the rights to the Rockstar Ending books for a repeatable TV series which is now in development.
Nicola is a regular blogger on technology, society and the arts. She has lectured in universities on leadership, PR, ethics and corporate social responsibility and consults on communications management. She has appeared on BBC Radio 4 Today, BBC local radio, and written for a wide range of media outlets including The Independent, Time Out, Louder Than War and Influence.
She lives in south east London with her husband and two adult children.
You can find out more about Nicola over on nicolarossi.com
After university she flirted briefly with journalism, and then began a 30-year career in communications management, eventually running international teams for big technology companies.
In 2017 she was awarded an MA in Digital Media from Goldsmiths University. That was when the trouble began. She started to write about surveillance, data ownership, consent and the potential for people to be manipulated without their knowledge.
Her debut novel, Rockstar Ending, started life as a short story, ‘One Last Gift’, which won a dystopian fiction award from the Orwell Society. The judges described it as ‘highly original, macabre and very funny’. It was published in the Journal of Orwell Studies.
By January 2022, Nicola will have published another two full length books in the Rockstar Ending series, Rock On and Rockaway, in addition to the prequel novella, For Those About to Rock.
In September 2021 Free@Last TV announced that they had acquired the rights to the Rockstar Ending books for a repeatable TV series which is now in development.
Nicola is a regular blogger on technology, society and the arts. She has lectured in universities on leadership, PR, ethics and corporate social responsibility and consults on communications management. She has appeared on BBC Radio 4 Today, BBC local radio, and written for a wide range of media outlets including The Independent, Time Out, Louder Than War and Influence.
She lives in south east London with her husband and two adult children.
You can find out more about Nicola over on nicolarossi.com
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 8, 2022
I love this series and have been really looking forward to reading this book. I have never been disappointed by any of the author's work.
Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, Rossi's observational humour and the acronyms are hilarious. There were quite a number of times, when I was reading in bed, that I almost woke my sleeping husband with the bed shaking because of my laughter.
The third in the 'Rockstar Ending' series sees our compassionate activists Lexi, the Bowie-obsessed Bob, and their crew in deeper danger with the Corporation. Meanwhile the Yuthentic Party are using (in my mind) unethical bullying as to what the old and disabled need to be doing to help the young, and selling this manifesto easily to the young and selfish.
I'm not going to spoil the storyline in any way, but this really is a tremendous piece of writing. The characters are full, believable, and I felt their tears, frustrations, joy and pain. There are more twists and turns than that long and winding road in San Francisco, and you will love them. Depending on where your true nature lies, of course. It's insightful, intelligent, and scarily feasible speculative fiction and I'm sure that this resonates with readers everywhere. The final two paragraphs took my breath away.
Being a huge David Bowie fan myself, I loved that the cover artist, Tim Doyle, successfully and beautifully designed Bowie-inspired covers, there are great playlists for each book, and that the author released 'Rockaway' today (8th January 2022), on what would've been Bowie's 75th birthday. Absolutely wonderful.
Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, Rossi's observational humour and the acronyms are hilarious. There were quite a number of times, when I was reading in bed, that I almost woke my sleeping husband with the bed shaking because of my laughter.
The third in the 'Rockstar Ending' series sees our compassionate activists Lexi, the Bowie-obsessed Bob, and their crew in deeper danger with the Corporation. Meanwhile the Yuthentic Party are using (in my mind) unethical bullying as to what the old and disabled need to be doing to help the young, and selling this manifesto easily to the young and selfish.
I'm not going to spoil the storyline in any way, but this really is a tremendous piece of writing. The characters are full, believable, and I felt their tears, frustrations, joy and pain. There are more twists and turns than that long and winding road in San Francisco, and you will love them. Depending on where your true nature lies, of course. It's insightful, intelligent, and scarily feasible speculative fiction and I'm sure that this resonates with readers everywhere. The final two paragraphs took my breath away.
Being a huge David Bowie fan myself, I loved that the cover artist, Tim Doyle, successfully and beautifully designed Bowie-inspired covers, there are great playlists for each book, and that the author released 'Rockaway' today (8th January 2022), on what would've been Bowie's 75th birthday. Absolutely wonderful.
February 5, 2022
After an impressive second entry in the series, this third book seemed to be marking time with too much discussion and nothing much happening beyond characters attending a political rally, taking a visit to Southport (where Nicola Rossi seems to have a bit of a downer on the north and northerners). There is one set action piece with a protest in London that had real opportunity for drama, but this fizzles out - as does the book itself, which just ends in a distinctly desultory fashion.
While the dastardly Corporation and the Yuthentic political party behind its increasingly dodgy euthanasia product seem to move on inexorably, apart from a setback where they go too far even for their supporters, the activists opposing them don't seem to be doing much.
One thing I don't understand is that the books in this series are labelled funny in the blurb - I suspect this is only the case if you think giving practically every organisation or project silly acronyms is hilarious (for example, the 'Corporation Robotics and Aviation Plant'). I find this irritating, but continue to think the series as a whole is amongst the best new dystopian novels I've read in a good while.
This could have been the triumphant conclusion of an excellent trilogy, but instead I got the feeling that Rossi, perhaps because according to the cover this series is 'now in development for television', was stretching it out to get more books into the series. It's okay, and I'm glad I've read it, though Rossi's naive writing style works less well when there's not much happening, but because of this thinning out, Rockaway doesn't do its two predecessors justice.
While the dastardly Corporation and the Yuthentic political party behind its increasingly dodgy euthanasia product seem to move on inexorably, apart from a setback where they go too far even for their supporters, the activists opposing them don't seem to be doing much.
One thing I don't understand is that the books in this series are labelled funny in the blurb - I suspect this is only the case if you think giving practically every organisation or project silly acronyms is hilarious (for example, the 'Corporation Robotics and Aviation Plant'). I find this irritating, but continue to think the series as a whole is amongst the best new dystopian novels I've read in a good while.
This could have been the triumphant conclusion of an excellent trilogy, but instead I got the feeling that Rossi, perhaps because according to the cover this series is 'now in development for television', was stretching it out to get more books into the series. It's okay, and I'm glad I've read it, though Rossi's naive writing style works less well when there's not much happening, but because of this thinning out, Rockaway doesn't do its two predecessors justice.
January 18, 2022
A very entertaining reunion with a diverse cast of characters whom we know from the preceding two books in this series. The author's ability to create funny acronyms made me smile a lot. this book is less dark than the previous books of this series, but the themes explored are no less substantial.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews