Book Review: Rogue Genesis by Ceri London

Rogue Genesis by Ceri LondonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rogue Genesis, the first novel in Ceri London's Shimmer in the Dark series, is an intricate and visionary science fiction novel that resembles a mash-up of notables like David Weber's Honor Harrington series and Peter Hamilton's The Dreaming Void. With a grand scope and intimate storytelling style, Rogue follows one man, a highly decorated and successful US special forces soldier, as he tries to save not only his family from a malevolent secret society of psychics, but also an entire alien civilization from the devastating cosmic forces that are set to destroy their home world.

Weaving political intrigue, scientific exploration, and elements of fantasy into a suspenseful narrative, London's story is highly ambitious in its vision, and she pulls it off with the kind of necessary plausibility that will appeal to many hard SF fans along with a look inside the intimacies of human nature and relationships that will appeal to those who prefer more character-driven novels.

Though the novel's initial pace is leisurely, London enhances long moments of slow narrative with superbly executed and exciting action that will definitely get your heart racing and your fingers turning the page. Rogue is a novel that is best consumed in large chunks, as its meandering and subtle reveals require a high level of concentration to fully grasp. It is the perfect novel for a weekend spent relaxing beachside or for filling time during a long overseas flight.

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WAR IS CHEAP!

What’s it like for a writer to finish their latest novel, especially when it’s the last book in a trilogy? Is it an occasion for joy, or is it an occasion to shed tears of sadness and separation, the same kind you feel when you finish reading a great novel? Does it feel like a triumph, or does it bring on more of a sense of being lost and confused, kind of like a puppy that has misplaced her favorite shoe?

I suspect the answer to this is different for every writer. Absurdly, the book I’m releasing today is called Contract of War and is a study of postwar behavior in a formerly oligarchical society. And yet I surreptitiously blinked away a couple of tears in a subdued cathartic expulsion of all of the above when I wrote the final words a few months ago. Then, upon having my little moment, I tapped command-S, followed by command-N, and started a new story. Now if that isn’t a little weird, a little different, a little, I don’t know, disturbing—but that’s what writing is like. All writers, from Huxley to Bacigalupi, from McCaffrey to Lackey, from PKD to Priest and so on, create and destroy on such a continuous basis that redefining the range of normal human emotions becomes an unintended side effect of our profession.

And we love it.

We love the words, we love the process, and we love the long hours spent in a seat or standing at a table pouring our brainmeats into bits on a box so that we can take ourselves, and if we’re very, very lucky, other readers, on journeys so bizarre, so enlightening, so frightening, so fundamentally, heart-stoppingly exciting that we can’t sleep at night because of how much fun we’re all having. We often cackle, we frequently weep, and more than Robert DeNiro in Awakenings, we stare off into space looking like androids with drained batteries while the world spins unnoticed around us. So in a roundabout way, we love what we do because it makes us seem to others a little like drooling idiots.

And we are comfortable with that, because we do it for another reason. We do it for days like today when for once our natural introvertedness gets shaken inside out and we get to tell the world about our latest brainbaby. And today is that day for me. So without further ramblingly obtuse ado, I introduce to you, Contract of War, the final book in my military science fiction/action-adventure series, the Spectras Arise Trilogy.

Contract of War

Unification or tyranny. The only difference is the body count.

In the aftermath of a system-wide war between the Admin and Corp Loyalists and the non-citizen population of the Algols, everything once resembling order has been leveled. Scattered enclaves of survivors dot the worlds, living, however they can, in snarled lawlessness. Aly Erikson and her crew have carved out a niche of relative peace, doing their best to go on with their lives through salvaging, scavenging, and stealing. But with no force left to keep the lid on the pot, the pressures of chaos and discord soon cause conflicts to boil over. As enemies close in from all directions, even, sometimes, from within, the crew once again must fight—not just for survival, not just for their way of life, but this time for a future that can finally lay to rest the system’s bloody and savage past.The Spectras Arise Trilogy

Contract of Defiance, Contract of Betrayal, and Contract of War follow heroine Aly Erikson and her crew of anti-Admin smugglers through an ever-escalating glut of life-and-death adventures and the trials of living on the side of liberty and freedom—whether they agree with the law or not—in the far future of the Algol star system. As former Corps members, most are no strangers to fighting and dissent, but more than anything, they want to spend their lives flying under the radar without control or interference from the system’s central government, The Political and Capital Administration of the Advanced Worlds. But the Admin's greed-drenched dualism of power and corruption has other plans, and throughout the series, Aly and her crew are reminded of one lesson time and again: when all other options run out, never let go of your gun.