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Dark Future
Route 666
In a nightmarish future America, U.S. Cavalry trooper Leona Tyree is assigned the task of escorting popular evangelist Elder Nguyen Seth and his followers to the promised land of Utah, but she soon begins to believe that the seemingly modest holy man may be up to no good. Original.
251 pages, Paperback
First published January 5, 1990
71 people want to read
About the author
Jack Yeovil
21 books61 followers"Jack Yeovil" is a pseudonym used by author Kim Newman.
Newman's pseudonymous novels, as Jack Yeovil, play elegant games with genre cliche--perhaps the best of these is the sword-and-sorcery novel Drachenfels which takes the prescribed formulae of the games company to whose bible it was written and make them over entirely into a Kim Newman novel.
Newman's pseudonymous novels, as Jack Yeovil, play elegant games with genre cliche--perhaps the best of these is the sword-and-sorcery novel Drachenfels which takes the prescribed formulae of the games company to whose bible it was written and make them over entirely into a Kim Newman novel.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 31, 2014
I have ambitions this year to tackle some more challenging literary works, but right now I'm sicker than a thing that is very sick indeed and fancy a bit of this post-collapse cyberpunk horror sci-fi western. The last published in the Dark Future series, it's also a prequel, as Elder Seth leads his Josephite flock through the vast, nearly abandoned US desert, to Salt Lake City. It's a bloody trail, and that's how Seth likes it, all part of the ritual to bring forth the dark Lovevraftian gods he serves. It's nasty and satirical and violent and somehow sets the right mood for this dog-day New Year.
September 21, 2020
I remember loving this book when I was young, but felt frustrated that it wasn’t a longer story - I read it when it was part of the 1994 collection of short stories under the same title. So I was intrigued to discover recently that when Route 666 was re-released in 2006, it had been expanded to a full-length novel. Of course I ordered it and read it almost straight after.
It was good. I loved the setting and characters. It really reads like a western (a genre I like a lot), especially with the incorporation of the Josephites - there is even a long section set in the mid-19th century which is basically a western. Elder Seth and his Josephites make excellent villains, and the sinister occulty goings on are superb.
I think three things knocked it down a bit for me though. First, the plot was a bit simple in the end. Josephites drive to Utah, and a lot of people get killed. US Road Cavalry and the Psychopomps gang (both excellent inclusions) end up involved. Knowing that Krokodil Tears and Demon Download follow on, I wondered if the whole lot would better be incorporated together in a single novel. Knowing that Route 666 started as a short story, it shouldn’t be that unexpected that the plot is simple.
Similar to my re-read of Demon Download, I found Route 666 had dated more than Jack Yeovil’s Warhammer novels, and this was a bit jarring. I don’t mean the pop culture references (of which there are way more in his Dark Future cycle) - these are a nice nostalgia trip - but the behaviour and interactions between characters, like the strong wafts of sexism, homophobia and transphobia. It is not explicitly condoned and it’s not condemned either, but it did feel very reflective of 80s attitudes in a way that was really jarring today. Credit to Yeovil though for having great main female characters, and even a rare minor “indeterminate” non-binary character, which actually was quite ahead of its time.
The third thing I disliked was the attempt in the 2006 publication to update the timeline and references of the 1994 original. A couple of bits in the text were missed or no longer made sense. For instance, at one point it says that they were 4 years from the millennium, from which I placed the original story as set in 1996, and that one of the characters had a grandfather who fought in the Second World War, which suddenly becomes implausible in the new setting of 2021. As an aside, in this version, the end times come in 2021, which after 2020 when I read this seems entirely plausible. The “newstrivia” history of the world, interspersed in the text and helping to explain the alternate timeline, covers the 1960s, 1970s... and then the 2010s presumably where the 1980s should have been. I also disliked the attempts to update the cultural references. Oliver North has been completely excised - presumably because by 2006 he had become a complete unknown - and seemingly replaced as US president by Al Gore. And this highlights a problem with the updates: Al Gore almost feels as unknown now in 2020 as Oliver North did in 2006, so they may as well have left it as it was, as it all dates quickly. Similarly with all the actors’ names. I can’t remember who the 80s actors originally used were, but Sarah Michelle Geller is almost as equally obscure today, no doubt.
I didn’t have my 1994 copy to hand, and so wasn’t able to see which parts were added to flesh out the 2006 version into a novel. I assume the 19th century section was part of it.
Addendum from 21 Sep: I was able to compare with the original 54-page short story (including illustrations) and was really surprised how much more has been added - essentially five times the amount! Al Gore has indeed replaced Oliver North. The short story is pared right down to the US Road Cavalry following the Josephites, the fight between Jazzbeaux and the Daughter of the American Revolution, and the incident at Spanish Fork. So there’s no history of the Josephites back in the 19th century, no potted newstrivia history of the 60s onward, no cyborgs (I wonder why that entire arc was added?), and much less on Jazzbeaux and the Psychopomps.
It was good. I loved the setting and characters. It really reads like a western (a genre I like a lot), especially with the incorporation of the Josephites - there is even a long section set in the mid-19th century which is basically a western. Elder Seth and his Josephites make excellent villains, and the sinister occulty goings on are superb.
I think three things knocked it down a bit for me though. First, the plot was a bit simple in the end. Josephites drive to Utah, and a lot of people get killed. US Road Cavalry and the Psychopomps gang (both excellent inclusions) end up involved. Knowing that Krokodil Tears and Demon Download follow on, I wondered if the whole lot would better be incorporated together in a single novel. Knowing that Route 666 started as a short story, it shouldn’t be that unexpected that the plot is simple.
Similar to my re-read of Demon Download, I found Route 666 had dated more than Jack Yeovil’s Warhammer novels, and this was a bit jarring. I don’t mean the pop culture references (of which there are way more in his Dark Future cycle) - these are a nice nostalgia trip - but the behaviour and interactions between characters, like the strong wafts of sexism, homophobia and transphobia. It is not explicitly condoned and it’s not condemned either, but it did feel very reflective of 80s attitudes in a way that was really jarring today. Credit to Yeovil though for having great main female characters, and even a rare minor “indeterminate” non-binary character, which actually was quite ahead of its time.
The third thing I disliked was the attempt in the 2006 publication to update the timeline and references of the 1994 original. A couple of bits in the text were missed or no longer made sense. For instance, at one point it says that they were 4 years from the millennium, from which I placed the original story as set in 1996, and that one of the characters had a grandfather who fought in the Second World War, which suddenly becomes implausible in the new setting of 2021. As an aside, in this version, the end times come in 2021, which after 2020 when I read this seems entirely plausible. The “newstrivia” history of the world, interspersed in the text and helping to explain the alternate timeline, covers the 1960s, 1970s... and then the 2010s presumably where the 1980s should have been. I also disliked the attempts to update the cultural references. Oliver North has been completely excised - presumably because by 2006 he had become a complete unknown - and seemingly replaced as US president by Al Gore. And this highlights a problem with the updates: Al Gore almost feels as unknown now in 2020 as Oliver North did in 2006, so they may as well have left it as it was, as it all dates quickly. Similarly with all the actors’ names. I can’t remember who the 80s actors originally used were, but Sarah Michelle Geller is almost as equally obscure today, no doubt.
I didn’t have my 1994 copy to hand, and so wasn’t able to see which parts were added to flesh out the 2006 version into a novel. I assume the 19th century section was part of it.
Addendum from 21 Sep: I was able to compare with the original 54-page short story (including illustrations) and was really surprised how much more has been added - essentially five times the amount! Al Gore has indeed replaced Oliver North. The short story is pared right down to the US Road Cavalry following the Josephites, the fight between Jazzbeaux and the Daughter of the American Revolution, and the incident at Spanish Fork. So there’s no history of the Josephites back in the 19th century, no potted newstrivia history of the 60s onward, no cyborgs (I wonder why that entire arc was added?), and much less on Jazzbeaux and the Psychopomps.
December 4, 2012
Though it's interesting to see how Nguyen Seth fell in with the Josephites and what actually happened at Spanish Fork, somehow this one didn't quite gel to my taste. Not really bad, but a bit worse than the rest of the series. Too bad the final chapter was lost in a computer crash.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews