The Machine Awakes

February 23, 2015
Christopher’s uneven second Spider Wars novel (after The Burning Dark) grinds gears as it shifts from space horror to espionage and adventure. As the war continues against the Spiders, “organo-mechanical” creatures vulnerable to psychic attacks, spy Von Kodiak is recalled from his deep-cover mission after the space fleet’s admiral is assassinated. The investigation leads Kodiak to an AWOL Psi-Marine trainee named Caitlin whose brother recently died in battle, and then to a conspiracy involving religious fanatics and the entire military-industrial complex. While Christopher’s characters are generally rich and interesting, his plot too often relies on contrivances and convenience, and his sense of narrative flow is often baffling: a major villain isn’t even mentioned, let alone introduced, until over halfway into the book, and the multiple chapters spent on the aborted mission Kodiak is rather ludicrously pulled from do nothing to develop his personality. There are still plenty of entertaining action sequences (an interrogation interrupted by yet another assassination is staged particularly well), and the rest isn’t bad so much as underwhelming. Agent: Stacia Decker, Donald Maass Literary.

February 15, 2015
Space opera set in the same universe as Christopher's space-horror yarn The Burning Dark (2014).Earth is losing its war with gigantic alien machines called Spiders. When the current Fleet Admiral's plan to use psychic-powered psi-marines to defeat the Spiders ends in disaster, he's overthrown by hard-liners. Then the deposed Admiral is assassinated, so Cmdr. Laurel Avalon of the Fleet Bureau of Investigation tasks agent Von Kodiak to find out why and by whom-particularly when the Admiral's usurper is immediately eliminated too. But Kodiak's prime suspect, psi-marine Sgt. Tyler Smith, was killed in action months ago, at the same time Smith's sister Cait vanished from the Fleet Academy. Cait, hoodwinked by crazy Samantha Flood's dissident religious sect Morning Star into agreeing to assassinate the (first) Admiral, knows Tyler isn't dead because she shares a telepathic bond with him. But before she can carry out her assignment, somebody else kills the Admiral. Confused, she flees, only to be captured by Morning Star agents and conveyed to Jupiter, where the Jovian Mining Corporation maintains vast facilities. Here, Flood intends to plug Cait into the JMC's AI so as to create, or awaken, her god. But the JMC's shadowy owner has even more unpleasant plans for Cait. And where is Tyler and the thousands of other supposedly dead psi-marines? The plot just about adds up if you aren't too fussy and ignore the irrelevant discursions and limited action. A far more serious blemish are the characters, so paper-thin they don't even qualify as stereotypes, what with an insanely overconfident, chortling supervillain, and a heroine whose accomplishments involve being duped, drugged, beaten up and plugged into a mind-blowing computer system. Fans of the previous certainly will want to investigate.

February 15, 2015

Cait and Tyler Smith are twins with psionic abilities who both trained to be psi-Marines. After Tyler is supposedly killed in action, Cait drops out of the academy and joins a shadowy group that promises to bring Tyler home. She ends up in the middle of a conspiracy involving a coup in the Fleet and a new front in the war with the alien Spiders. VERDICT While the first book in the series, 2014's The Burning Dark, was a tight claustrophobic work of spooky horror, the larger canvas here loses that dark menacing mood. The Spiders are sure to be good long-term villains in the series, but this middle volume lacks punch and has some distracting flashbacks that pull readers out of the story without gaining much narratively. Christopher (Hangwire; Empire State) is a great new talent in sf, so one hopes the upcoming entries will regain some momentum.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015
If someone were to ask people what upcoming sf action movie they should get excited about seeing, many would suggest Christopher's new novel The Machine Awakes. Christopher's cinematic moment-to-moment writing style rockets along as a vehicle for coups staged by a psychic marine corps, secretive cults hiding among humanity's interstellar colonies, and giant planet-consuming alien machines primed to drive us to extinction. The book merges the three stories of Laurel Avalon, a military-investigations officer for the united human navy; Von Kodiack, a mischievous but charming agent; and Cait Smith, an unusually gifted psionic marine cadet gone AWOL. Throwing all of them at the reader, one after another, within the first handful of short chapters is a risky move, making the initial name salad difficult to sort out, but the story finds its groove in a consistently relentless pace that has you vividly imagining each scene on the big screen. Christopher has delivered an unfailingly fun and easy read for those who want a good spaceship and laser-gun fix.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)