You should be geeking Avery Cates.

Avery Cates is a series by Jeff Somers. I emailed him for an interview and he even replied. I got to interview the man, twice! But I may just be bragging here. I have been a fan of this series since I pick up the first book on a whim and began to read it. The pages pulled me in and I haven’t stopped pushing the book since. In a unified world where the people are controlled by the corrupt System Cops, and held together by the crooked politicians the world has become a dark place and in this noir cyberpunk world heroes don’t flourish but the bad guys do.

Enter Avery Cates. He’s a bad man, a very bad man. He’s a criminal, a thief but more importantly he is a killer for hire, an assassin, a Gunner. He’s one of the best there is and well known because of it but that’s not turning out to be a good thing for him. Cates has made enemies and they never seem to forget.

Cates deals with the worse of the worse. He faces off against religious Monks: cyborgs with human brains, enhanced robotic bodies and a small arsenal of advanced weaponry. He has deal with being a carrier to the plague that could wipe out mankind, and being thrown into Chengara – a prison with a survival rate of exactly zero.

The mystery unfolds like the noir novels of Dashiell Hammett or Jim Butcher. The book plays like a Sam Spade mystery deep in this cyperpunk future. With each step Avery Cates gets closer to his answer, killing any who gets in his way, but with the subtle and rich detail that paints the image of the dark futuristic world similar to how Butcher fills in his urban fantasy world.

The book is an exciting techno thriller with enough action to keep pace with a movie. The library journal compares the book to Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) but I like to compare Cates to Han Solo back in the first Star Wars (A New Hope) before all those pesky morals started to get in his way. Just to compare I think Cates would have also shot Greedo the only difference is that he wouldn’t have let the green lizard talk first.

While you’re arguing over who shot first, Han or Greedo, Cates would have killed them both and celebrated with a drink. – 42 Webs

The series has four published books, The Electric Church, The Digital Plague, The Eternal Prison and The Terminal State, with a fifth, The Final Evolution, being released on Canada Day of 2011.

I have mentioned Jeff Somers in a couple 42 Web articles in the past, commenting on how I expect him to become one of the strongest and forefront of science fiction writers of our era and I use this series as arguments. Somers avoids a lot of the errors that plague science fiction and fantasy write. He slowly unfolds the mystery in front of you, reminding you of names that you will need and giving you the information and details of his dark future slowly and on a need to know basis. He doesn’t overwhelm you with the details of his complex world to quickly or hold back until it seems forced, instead his subtle approach to detail and expansion of his techno noir world come naturally and feel like you’ve actually known these facts and take them as truth.

A dark future with a dark hero that wont let anybody stop him and he’ll shoot you if you disagree. – 42 Webs

Now Geek This!

If you like this:

Storm Front – Jim Butcher

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Philip K. Dick

Something from the Nightside – Simon R. Green

Orphanage – Robert Buettner