Dragon Ring
, by Lettie Prell, is set in the near future, after an devastating L.A. earthquake and the conversion of the country of Guatemala to a single corporation, this book blends Mayan mythology and high tech, virtual reality and magic. I grabbed a copy after reading the sample and have it near the top of my TBR stack.Nadine is a special young woman. She is the daughter of the man who transformed the small nation of Guatemala into the world’s largest and most powerful corporation. Nadine is an expert at virtual-reality applications, and when she goes undercover to find her father’s killers, she discovers a power within the Earth that can transform civilization — or destroy entire cities. She must face the juggernaut of corporate greed and secrecy to stop an experiment that could have cataclysmic consequences.
Although she is a skeptic, Nadine is finding that the magic claimed by mystics for centuries has real roots, and combining this mystical energy with virtual-reality control gives her the only tool that can stop the impending catastrophe … but at a great cost. She has awakened a beast within her own spirit that threatens to consume her.
While checking out the book's reviews, I looked to see what else might be out there from the same publisher and uncovered three more 99 cent specials. I've grabbed samples of all three and will probably buy the lot sometime this today. It's under $3 total and who knows how long they'll stay at this price; I'd spend that much on gas (more if I grabbed a coffee) just to browse the discount aisles at any of the "local" bookstores.
Migration of the Kamishi (The Feral World)
by Gaddy Bergmann, the first book in The Feral World series, tells the odyssey of Blake and Manosh, two young men of the Fifty-First Century, as they journey across a new and unrecognizable expanse of the Great Plains. In the Fifty-First Century, the planet has recovered from a three-thousand-year-old wound - an asteroid strike. In the middle of the Twenty-First Century, the asteroid Apophis struck the planet and wiped out civilization in a disaster of biblical proportions. Civilization was utterly ruined, and all technology - communication, transportation, power, everything - was lost. Faced with the choice to rebuild the past as it was, or to live a simpler life in harmony with nature, the few survivors chose harmony. Meanwhile, nature filled the niches left behind in the great "Rubbletown" cities and the great expanses in between. Blake and Manosh leave their home in the Badlands near Mt. Rushmore, after an invasion by a neighboring tribe massacres their village. They alone must carry the faith and legacy of the Kamishi tribe as they migrate south to the Warmland, where they hope to find safety from the coming winter. They endure only with their faith, hope, and a few stone-age tools. Gaddy Bergmann is a naturalist and scientist, performing research in zoology and microbiology. He infuses his post-apocalyptic world with the sense that humanity has learned from its mistakes. He asks the reader to consider what would happen if the planet were given a chance to escape the endless harvesting and management of its resources and allowed to heal.
Irreconcilable Differences
by James R. Strickland.Rachel Santana is thirty-six years old. She’s an agent for Interpol Covert Services. Before that, she was an interrogator at the White Sands Reeducation Camp, following the breakup of the United States. Before that, she was a prisoner there. Before that, a Yankee, one of a group of corporate mercenaries trying to extract something like a victory in the Middle East. Before that, she was a United States Marine. She’s a survivor. A cop. A soldier. A destroyer. A killer.
Now, Robert Neil, Rachel’s boss and soon-to-be ex-husband, has implanted a digital copy of Rachel’s mind in Michelle Marie (Micki) Blake, a 16 year old farmgirl-hacker in rural Kansas. The mission: Learn the local hacker ecology. Locate the dangerous new player prowling the rural networks. Destroy him. Take no prisoners. Leave no incriminating evidence. As covert missions go, it should be pretty simple.
There’s nothing simple, though, about being conjoined at the cortex with someone else. There’s nothing simple about life on the farm, the life of a high school student, the life of a sixteen year old in post-United States Kansas.
And the rural hacker ecology is unraveling with new forces in play, new powers, new players. It will take all of Rachel’s experience just to survive. All of Micki’s skills as a hacker to dig for the truth. All of their combined abilities to put the pieces together, to find the real threat despite the web of deception and half truth that surrounds both their operation and Copy-Rachel’s very existence.
And somehow, they have to avoid being grounded.
Looking Glass
is another by by James R. Strickland (and it looks like he is working on two more).Looking Glass is set in the not too distant future, in a gritty, unrefined, shattered North America. Hackers and IT security technicians fight a different kind of war in cyberspace. A serial killer has found a way to use the network to reach inside his victim’s brains, and use these brains as his weapon. “Shroud” is a security network team leader for a large retail company. In the realm of cyberspace, inside a sensory deprivation tank and “jacked in” to the network, she is fast, nimble, and ruthless. She is just beginning her shift when the killer strikes for the first time. She survives, but her entire team is dead or missing. She is exiled from her corporate resources, and her search for the killer is fraught with peril and overwhelming odds.
