Sleeper: The Definitive Collected Edition

by David Fennell

Will Starling is pulled from the sea with no memory of his past. In his jacket is a strange notebook with a bullet lodged inside: a bullet meant for him. As London prepares for the Blitz, Starling soon finds himself pursued by vicious agents and a ruthless killer known as the Pastor. All of them want the notebook and will do anything to get it. As Starling's memory starts to return, he realises he has skills that make him a match for any assassin. But there is something else. At his core is a deep-rooted rage that he cannot explain. Where is his family and why has no one reported him missing? Fighting for survival with the help of MI5 agent-in-training, Anna Wilder, Starling follows leads across London in a race against time to find the Stones of Fire before the next air raid makes a direct hit and destroys London for ever.

Sleeper: The Red Storm
Shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2019

1943. Sleeper spy Will Starling has been drafted in to the SOE, joining forces with the French Resistance in the fight against the Nazis; but Starling's memory is fractured and only occasional flashbacks reveal fragments of his past. Despite this, he has not forgotten his pledge to find and rescue his sister, Rose - if she is still alive. When his mission in France is compromised, Will suspects he's been betrayed.

Back in London he hears that VIPER are in league with the Axis powers and are developing a new and deadly weapon. As he and MI5 agent Anna Wilder set out to destroy it, their every move is anticipated by their enemies. Who is the mole in the British Secret Service? As they close in on VIPER's Swiss headquarters, it seems no one can be trusted. Are Starling and Anna able to prevent the unleashing of the Red Storm that will bring mass destruction on a scale even the Nazis haven't dreamt of?

While Starling tries to save the world, Rose has become the key to VIPER's future plans and is drugged to dull her kinetic powers. But Rose faces danger from an unexpected enemy and her time is running out..

480 pages, Hardcover

Published October 10, 2022

Reviews

[Roderick Clyne]

I can't see how anyone could think this book deserves any stars at all, it's that poor. I don't like giving up on a book, so I managed to struggle through to the end. I shouldn't have bothered.
It's difficult to say in which genre this travesty is supposed to be: it starts in Britain in May 1941 - in the early days of the second world war, but the actual war has only a walk-on part, with the real enemy being a secret society called Viper, which aims at world domination using a series of occult secret weapons. So, it's a fusion of historical spy fiction, conspiracy thriller, and dark fantasy/alternative history. OK, if that's what you like. What really upset me though was the almost total lack of research into the period: people drive around as if petrol was freely available, there's an Underground station beneath the British Museum (closed 1933 - and it wasn't actually beneath the museum but nearby), people listen to transistor radios (not available until 1954), and so on. The dialogue is leaden, but this is as expected. A lot of the descriptions involve anachronistic Americanisms, with one woman keeping a pistol in her purse (not handbag), et cetera.
The text is littered with printers' errors, which is not surprising seeing that the publisher is not a conventional operation.
Why is it all in the present tense, since ostensibly set more than 80 years ago?