Tom Rob Smith

On a pleasant summer day, aliens arrive and tell humankind that they have one month to move to Antarctica or else. It's quite a beginning for a novel, and an interesting one, but that's all we get of that. Everyone either moves south or prepares to die without question or resistance. The waters around Antarctica are filled with boats of every description, people are huddled on the shores of the most hostile continent in the middle of its winter, lacking fuel, shelter or clothing, which gives the great real start to the novel, seeing how people came together to...oh, never mind. As soon as people are huddled on shore, the book jumps forward twenty years.

This book is by Tom Rob Smith, who wrote Child 44 and a few other novels centered around the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence during the Cold War. They were thrillers, but ones well anchored in their historical setting, had interesting and plausible plots, and well-developed and complex characters. None of those elements make an appearance in this book.

So what is this book about, since it didn't care to waste time on the alien invasion or in polar survival? Well, since humankind is crowded onto a hostile area with very few resources and no interest in what is happening elsewhere, since people are living in extremely crowded and squalid conditions with barely enough of anything to survive, with all resources strictly controlled and rationed, with any surviving supplies from the rest of the world accessible only to the well-connected, with the end of any sort of representative government, and society controlled by a group of unelected elites, you'd expect that the story would finally gel around a resistance movement. You would be wrong. In this world, scarcity and over-crowding bring docility and contentment to the masses because, the author tells us several times, libertarianism has ended criminality. Also, there are draconian punishments for not being content and happy, but mostly it's a libertarian paradise, don't look to closely at how it works, that's not what this book is interested in.

So what is this book about? Well, because survival is so precarious, and the population dropping, all the scientists left have come together to create weird and terrifying hybrid animals that want to kill the remaining people. Yes, this was the consensus of the the best and brightest -- with aliens occupying most of the world, maybe, although no one has seen any sign of them, with humans desperately in need of a sustainable way to produce the things they need for survival, all the remaining wealth and resources is dedicated to building an enormous underground laboratory to make what they first intended to be small adjustments to the genetic code to make people better adapted to this new harsh environment, but now that all ethical considerations are considered moot, the scientists get over-excited and just keep one-upping themselves creating new animal hybrids, each one smarter, stronger and more able to survive and kill everyone. Do I need to tell you how this ends? Because, honestly, I gave up 85% of the way through. None of this was interesting, except, as it was written, the scientists weren't the bad guys. Also, since there was no more representative government, all the various world leaders opened a bar together. That was kind of interesting.… (more)

Leo Stepanivich Demidov, a war hero and member of the MGB, working as a high ranking employee of the State Security force, started off with one ambition: to serve his country. His job was frequently unpleasant, arresting and interrogating enemies, sometimes their own citizens who tried to undermine the government. Leo was involved with many successful arrests and took many prisoners, many of these prisoners guilty of anti-Soviet agitation, counterrevolutionary activity, and espionage. The problem was, no on could be sure they weren't guilty of these crimes, anybody from a retired vet to a top-ranking Party official could be under constant threat of arrest for attempting to overthrow, subvert, or weaken the Soviet Power.

When Leo finds himself in danger of arrest himself, the story starts to twist, and together Leo and his wife struggle against the very system that he once obediently and willingly served.

Leo and his wife are obsessed with solving a string of murders and this gruesome case soon becomes a cause they are both willing to die for. "Isn't this the way it starts? You have a cause you believe in, a cause worth dying for. Soon, it's a cause worth killing for. Soon, it's a cause worth killing innocent people for" PG 393. In trying to find justice, they were quickly forced to imitate the very system they were up against.

Child 44 was a thrilling mystery, love story, and horror story all in one. Even though parts of it were sickeningly gruesome, I found it hard to put it down. I have already recommended this book to many friends, and look forward to subsequent novels from this author.… (more)