Benjamin Percy

The Sky Vault by Benjamin Percy is a very highly recommended science fiction thriller and the third novel in the Comet Cycle. I loved this one so much I've purchased the first two novels in the series, The Ninth Metal and The Unfamiliar Garden (which I had a review copy of in December 2021). You can read The Sky Vault as a stand-alone novel, but science fiction aficionados will likely want the series.

The Sky Vault follows an investigation of a mysterious weather phenomena in Fairbanks, show more Alaska, and a government secret buried since WWII. The meteorite debris field of the Comet named Cain left a new metal, "omnimetal," which interferes with physics and relationship between time and space.

Chuck Bridges, a local DJ, has been trying to warn people and experts that there is a new kind of cloud over Fairbanks and has been summarily dismissed as a lunatic. He sees things in the clouds and sometimes hears soft voices. Something happens to him that send his son Theo and his friends searching for answers. Rolf Wagner, the local sheriff, finds himself investigating some odd, peculiar things. Joanna Straub is a contractor recently hired to construct a new facility on an old government site used in WWII. Sophie Chen, an agent with the shadowy group that calls themselves the Collectors, is in Fairbanks looking for something and she will do whatever she deems necessary to get what she seeks.

I was engrossed in this novel from start to finish. The writing is exceptional. The narrative is irresistible and completely engrossing. Percy expertly develops all the plot threads and brings them all together to create the larger story. The WWII chapters which are excerpts from a log book, are interesting but the full significance of them isn't revealed until later. Readers will know they need to pay attention to them as their importance becomes increasingly ominous.

The characters in The Sky Vault are varied, sympathetic, and all fully realized. I especially connected with the dialogue and thoughts of the characters and there were many times I said, "yes!" or laughed and felt as if I knew and understood these people. The Sky Vault is on my list of the best books of 2023.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of William Morrow via Edelweiss.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2023/09/the-sky-vault.html show less

So many ways to be a beast

Red Moon by Benjamin Percy (Grand Central Publishing, $16).

Recently out in trade paper, Benjamin Percy’s werewolves-as-political-allegory novel is satisfying on every level imaginable. It’s nothing short of delightful to have so many characters developed so well—not to mention so fully realized without resorting to tricks.

And, as with so many literary authors who try their hand at traditional genre fiction (Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Colin show more Whitehead), Percy does not slight language and mood as he develops a tightly-focused plot that builds suspense and maintains its pacing through more than 500 pages.

The story opens with a werewolf attack on an airplane. The Lycan—as they’re called, in this alternate universe where humans have been dealing with “the Lycan problem” for generations—transforms into a wolf-like monster in the plane’s lavatory, then explodes into a killing frenzy. He’s unable to enter the secured flight deck, but everyone else—with one exception—dies horribly.

That one exception is Patrick, a teenager en route to live with his mother while his father serves in a Guard unit in the Lycan Republic. Patrick stays hidden beneath the shredded bodies of the victims and is thus christened “Miracle Boy.”

Meanwhile, across the country, another teenager—Claire, a Lycan who has been attempting to live a normal life and assimilate—discovers that her parents have a radical past only when government agents arrive to arrest them and instead kill them. Claire escapes and survives, determined to find out who she is and why this has happened to her.

These two teenagers are the heart of the novel, but it’s peopled and wolved with plenty more intriguing characters who put faces and feelings on questions of security, terrorism, racism and “othering,” and of course, typical, old-fashioned human fuckery.

It’s an amazing piece of work and will surprise both readers of literary fiction and fans of werewolf stories.

(Published on Lit/Rant on 2/14/2014: http://litrant.tumblr.com/post/76623350244/so-many-ways-to-be-a-beast-red-moon-b... show less

I picked up 'The Ninth Metal', a Science Fiction book that looks at what happens when the Earth moves the path of debris from a comet and is hit by large numbers of meteors made of a ninth inert metal with some game-changing attributes, because it was recommended by Stephen King.

I can see now why he might have done that. Like his own work, it's original but still linked to a world we all understand. It follows multiple characters, is packed with plot twists and compelling 'what if?' show more possibilities and it kept me wanting to turn the pages.

What I liked most about it was that Benjamin Percy took me on a perfectly choreographed wild ride that constantly surprised me. The man is a magician, a master of misdirection.

The story starts with two shootings on the night when meteor after meteor ripped through the sky and tore into the land of a rural area. You know the meteor strikes, the shootings and the survivors are important but you don't know why. Then Percy, magician that he is, makes you forget all of them for now and gets you to concentrate on a scene that pulls you in with its simplicity and a familiarity that lets you think you know where this book is going. That maybe you've already seen the movie.

Percy focuses on a lone soldier with medals on a chest, coming home on a train. He is the prodigal eldest son, estranged from his powerful family, especially his almost legendary father, returning to the small town his family has dominated for generations, to attend his sister's wedding.

He's a quiet man in a loud environment. To those who look closely, his stillness suggests control rather than passivity. Then you learn that the small town is now a boomtown for mining the ninth metal and his noisy fellow passengers are all on their way to make their fortune. When you discover that his family's dominance over the town is being challenged by a vulgar, violent, arrogant carpetbagger from Texas, you think you know where this is going.

But you don't and you won't. You'll be fooled and misdirected and every time the plot shifts everything will be different but it will always make more sense. And where you end up and who you're with when you get there, well that's nothing like the book you thought you were in when you first saw that soldier riding the train home.

This is a Science Fiction thriller and there's a lot in it about what the ninth metal does and how it does it and how it will transform energy, transport and weaponry but I thought much of the power of the story came from how it drew on four very recognisable American traits.

First, there is the American cultural foundation stone that holds as a self-evident truth that in a gold rush/ oil rush / land rush, all laws are set aside while the strong fight and kill to get rich. This isn't a country where the State would declare that it owned all the ninth metal deposits and would license its exploitation for the benefit of all citizens. This is a country where you head out to grab what you can while you can and the devil take the hindmost. This is the Yukon. This is the robber barons building railways and shooting at and sabotaging the opposition. This is the real American Dream.

The second is the way cults flourish in America as the lost and the discarded seek purpose and meaning and rebirth through something larger than themselves. Here we get the Metal Eaters, addicted to consuming ninth metal dust that changes their consciousness in a way that they explain only by saying 'Metal is'.

Then there is the acceptance as natural that one family in a region can, over generations, if they are ruthless enough, acquire enough wealth and power to become almost unassailable and can then present themselves as the local good guys fighting off the out-of-State carpetbaggers. They are seen as part of the answer, not the cause of the problem.

Finally there is the deeply ingrained belief that the Federal government will countenance torture, extreme rendition and well-funded black ops if they think the stakes are high enough or perhaps just if they think that they can get away with it.

Percy weaves these threads into new patterns, constantly making the reader reassess what they thought they knew.

I liked the tone of 'The Ninth Metal'. It read like the text version of the very best graphic novels: packed with vivid images, rapid violence and dramatic 'ah ha' moments of revelation.

i recommend abandoning moderation when you consume this book. It's for gulping, not sipping. If you can, plan time for the binge read that will inevitably follow once you start the book. Take breaks if the tension gets to you or when you need to re-orient yourself after one of the 'I didn't see that coming' moments when the plot twists and tilts beneath you like a fairground ride.

This is the first book in the series but its also a full novel in its own right. There were no cliff-hanger endings here but it was also clear that the story is far from over. Everything changed the night the meteors screamed through the sky and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens next.

I listened to the audiobook version of 'The Ninth Metal' which I thought was well done. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.


https://soundcloud.com/hodderbooks/the-ninth-metal-by-benjamin-percy-read-by-jul... show less

I read the odd AWA comic here and there, but I'll admit to having actively avoided this one due to the fact that it's about zombies. And honestly, zombies bore the hell out of me. Always have, always will. In fact, my fervent wish is that we actually experience a true zombie apocalypse...that is, an apocalyptic event that takes out all zombies.

And yes, I am the guy that read every single one of the 32 trades of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead. But I found I enjoyed that because it was show more about the people, and much less about the shambling eaters. The humans were the walking dead, because they were all destined for the same fate.

Yet, for all of that when the manager of the comic shop I work at (yes, I work part time at both a comic shop and a book store...being semi-retired means I get to have my teenage dream jobs now) shoved this one into my hands and told me I had to read it, well...I had to read it. This was the guy that told me the same thing about the Tom King/Mitch Gerads [b:Mister Miracle|39208001|Mister Miracle|Tom King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1548140055l/39208001._SY75_.jpg|57475638], so I have to listen to him now.

Which is a long way around to saying (and yes, I know, Tobin, you're saying, get to the damn review...) that I not only read this, but I read the everlovin' shit out of this.

It's not necessarily a shockingly new take on the zombie story, nor is it necessarily groundbreaking comic book storytelling. But it is a captivating, multi-viewpoint tale of the survivors (and there's actually only an infinitesimal amount of real estate devoted to the zombies themselves, which I love). So, it's a zombie story virtually without zombies.

In other words, it's as much a zombie story as Stephen King's [b:The Stand|149267|The Stand|Stephen King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1213131305l/149267._SX50_.jpg|1742269] is a pandemic story. In Year Zero, Percy and Rosanas use zombies only as a trigger point, an inciting incident to give us a way in to the smaller story arcs of the various characters. Interestingly, none of the characters on their own are particularly fascinating, but taken as a whole, the sum of their stories seem greater than the individual parts.

The art is simply beautiful. Rosanas has a gorgeous, clean style that brings everything into sharp focus.

And the writing is quite good as well. If I have any complaint, it's that Percy can be a touch repetitive in reinforcing some of the various characters' personality traits, but that may be a symptom of monthly comic storytelling as well. And in a pleasant surprise, when this series started, as I said, I avoided it. After that, I never paid attention to it again until the trade was pushed into my hands. If I had, I likely would have realized that the writer of this series is also the author of a novel I read and really enjoyed a couple of months back, [b:The Dark Net|30971743|The Dark Net|Benjamin Percy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1499860280l/30971743._SY75_.jpg|51589483]. That fact alone would have made me pick it up.

Don't come in expecting big answers, because there's another volume coming. But do come in for the great characters, good writing, and lovely art. show less