If you’ve read my review of Jeff Somers’ Electric Church, you won’t be surprised that I immediately started reading The Digital Plague, followed slightly less immediately—due to availability—by Eternal Prison.*
I liked Digital Plague. I loved Eternal Prison.
In Digital Plague, things are going well for Avery Cates. He’s rich, he’s pushing back at the System of Federated Nations and the System Security Force, and he’s no longer a loner. But someone from his past wants revenge on Avery . . . and through him, on the entire human race. Avery is injected with a nanovirus and becomes Patient Zero for a plague that eats its victims from the inside out and reanimates them into near-unstoppable, brain-dead machines. Avery Cates needs to fight off his dead friends and keep his enemies close so he can shut down the nanos’ programming before his immunity is stripped from him.
As I said, I liked this book. I’m not the biggest zombie fan, though the reasons behind the reanimation make a lot of sense, especially in the context of the bad guy’s agenda. Having said that, it was Avery’s emotional state that hooked me. Here’s a man who had nothing to lose and won it all. Now he has something, maybe even someone, and a bit of autonomy . . . but in Avery’s world, that means bad stuff is about to happen.
Unlike Electric Church, which in my opinion could stand alone, Digital Plague doesn’t offer much rest at the end before segueing into Eternal Prison—which knocked my socks off as far as the first book did, if for slightly different reasons.
In Eternal Prison, something is wrong with Avery Cates—something that may be related to the supposedly inescapable Death Valley “interment camp” he and many other Persons of Interest were thrown into for reasons unknown.
But Avery has other things to worry about: the System of Federated Nations and the System Security Force have parted ways and are amassing Avatar troops and firepower for what will not be a Cold War. Avery, as reluctantly coerced as always, has been hired by the SFN to assassinate the head of the SFF . . . a man who is a little more, or a little less, than human.
In other words, there’s a war in hell, and Avery Cates is right in the middle of it. Again.
Besides being a good, gritty read, this book raises some interesting questions about what it means to be human. Where the Monks of the Electric Church were living brains trapped in robotic shells, Avatars’ knowledge bases and personalities have been extracted digitally and placed in artificial and super-enhanced bodies. But maybe they are just as trapped.
And maybe some of them don’t know. If you think you’re human, are you?
Avery Cates doesn’t spend much time thinking about these things—he’s a little busy—but the reader can’t help it. Or at least this reader couldn’t help it.
I would love to share my absolute favorite part of Eternal Prison, but I can’t—it would ruin everything that Mr. Somers wove in Part One. I will say that the last page of that section had me sitting up and yelling, “No way!” I also appreciated that Avery gets a bit of rest at the end . . . and an independent purpose.
Which leads me, I hope, to Terminal State, which should be delivered to my door any minute now.**
Until then, I’ll content myself with browsing Mr. Somers’ blog. I recommend his Ask Jeff Anything video series for anything that ails you.
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*I bought Eternal Prison, loaned it to a friend while reading Digital Plague, and then had to wait for her to come back from Denmark. She could have mailed it, but she would have beaten it home anyway—and I guess I can’t blame her for declining to spend $45 to ship a $7 book overnight air.
**Sandy, if you’re reading this, it’s a felony to tamper with the U.S. mail. It should be a crime to take a borrowed book over International borders without asking, but since you brought it back, I’ll let it pass this time.
Earful of Cider 