Colin F. Barnes

This collection of short stories was deliciously deviant, with a level of violence that reminded me of J.A. Konrath writing as Jack Kilborn. It’s a pull-no-punches, brain-splattering level of violence that may seem extreme to some, but that I think fits perfectly with the fantastical nature of the stories. You won’t agree with each protagonist’s reason for the violence, but I think that makes it more interesting. I was especially intrigued by the final story, Nemcoff’s Nemesis, which show more has appeared before in an audio anthology about a terrorist attack on the U.S. It’s a story that made me think after I was finished, and I actually went back and re-read a few sections to make sure I understood what happened.

This collection is perfect for anyone who has just wanted to go home and scream after a long day at work. Just don’t let your boss catch you reading it at your desk. show less

Civilization is over as we know it, most of the planet is a scorched wasteland. Only three human cities remain standing: London, Moscow and Hong Kong, they are now shells of their former selves and have become places where humans hide in fear from creatures that wan't to enslave or eat them. This isn't the Mayan prophecycome to life or the zombie apocolypse. The year is 2020 and bugs have taken over the planet.

It all started with an eruption at Yellowstone park followed by an army of bugs show more emerging from beneath the earth's crust . Their leader is The Great Maurr, a giant ant headed creature who has brought hell to earth and made all of North America into the City of Hell. The Great Maurr has taken over the planet and his bug army has laid waste to everything. Humanity has never known anything like this. there is no more religion, no more rules, just pain and suffering.

This is the setting for master of the macabre participant Collin Barnes' City of Hell Chronicles volume 1. City of Hell Chronicles is the first release from Anachron press which was founded by Collin Barnes. Anachron Press's goal is to produce timeless books that stand on their own. Anachron has already scheduled 3 anthologies for 2012 and is accepting submissions from authors who have great stories to tell.

City of Hell Chronicles is an anthology of 8 stories that shows how the Great Maurr enslaved the planet and how the last few survivers of the human race try to stay alive. The first story in this book is Genesis by Collin Barnes and tells how the end of the human race began. The second story by Victoria Griesdoorn called Medical Report tells what happens when a giant centipede is brought into a hospital and infects the hospital staff.

The third story is The Door From Below by Ren Warom which is about a group of three people who encounter faceless creatures called the stock takers that collect bodies to be turned into bug hybrids. Up next is London Calling by Kendall Grey which is about a woman who meets a group of strange monks that are not what they seem. Fifth on the list is The Lucky Ones by Anne Michaud. This one is a tragic love story about a woman trying to find her boyfriend after suffering a great loss.

The Final Passage by Belinda Frisch goes into how the bug society works and follows the story of a group of slaves trying to escape the city of hell. Expanding on the bug society is The Nursery by Amy L. Overley which follows a woman named Otter who is forced to become a part of a bug breeding program and becomes what she hates most. The last story is by Victoria Griesdoorn again and tells the tale of a woman living in a hospital that has to search for fuel to keep the building running and her patients alive.

Three words to describe this book is dark, disturbing and disgusting. I really enjoyed it, this book is exactly what a hard core horror novel should be, it creeps you out because each story presents characters that you can't help to fall in love with and you can't put it down because you wonder if these people are going to survive the harsh conditions they are in. My only problem with the book was that after reading four stories and seeing how dark it was, I felt I knew how the rest of the stories we're going to go but I guess with a book called City of Hell you shouldn't expect happy endings. What you do get to see in this book is stories of humans suffering great losses and doing whatever it takes to survive.

Despite the fact that it is an anthology, I thought the City of Hell Chronicles read like a novel. In each story you see how the conditions get progressivly worse, the bugs get stronger and the humans start to turn on each other. I found myself wondering if the writers talked to each other on how each story would go and how they would relate to each other. The writing in this book was much better then I expected and in the future and I would love to read more from each of these authors. There is a Chronicles Of Hell Volume 2 that will be coming out in 2012 and I can't wait to see where they go next. If your not to scared of bugs and you like your horror dark and scary give Chronicles Of Hell a try, you won't be disappointed.

David Watson
horroraddicts.net show less

tl;dr version: Fast paced action-filled dystopian cyberpunk, well written, particularly the technological aspects.
I totally admit I grabbed this while it was a freebie because of the spectacular cover. (I was very much reminded of an equally spectacular, if spectacularly bad '80s Australian movie called Circuitry Man - you get a cookie if you've ever even heard of that one.) The rest of this series has equally striking covers. They'd make fabulous posters actually.
No prizes for guessing the show more genre from the cover either, this is pure dystopian cyberpunk. A largely unexplained cataclysm has made the earth more or less unliveable, with "City Earth" the remaining safely domed city run by "The Family" via a figurehead government. At least that's what everyone thinks. Our hero Gerry discovers he's somehow been hacked, and declared winner of the "Death Lottery" and has a week to live, something he should have been exempt from as the creator of the lottery selection algorithm. Dead men have no rights, and lying beaten on the street after trying to get into his own workplace, he's picked up by a strange man who declares his code is possessed, and he needs exorcising. And it only gets weirder for Gerry after that. He discovers everything he thought he knew about his life, about his home city, and about the entire world and even humanity in general, may not be true.
There's a lot going on here, and it's mostly fun. What place religion in an almost purely on-line world and is white hat hacking the techno equivalent of exorcising demons? At least one character thinks it is. There's also some interesting discussion on the nature of evil. Is there truly "evil" and "good" and if there is, could you program them, create them out of code and algorithms? It even delves, albeit briefly, into the nature of humanity itself. Could a programmed created entire and then "inserted" into a human body, self-aware yet unaware of its genesis, be considered a human being? Would knowing how it was created change that? However unlike some recent reads, it doesn't dwell too much on the existentialism, but rather favours the action, and there's plenty of that. I found the balance just right, but YMMV of course, and I was in the mood for an action filled kind of book.

Yet I initially gave this a 4 star rating but I am considering knocking it down to 3.5 for two reasons, those being a somewhat hard to empathise with lead character, and a crazy tacked-on feeling cliffhanger at the end.

Yes there's a lot going on here, but Gerry sails through it all peculiarly unaffected. As a plot point, it kind of makes sense, eventually, as a reader though, I found he's difficult to engage with. Every time I get a handle on him emotionally and start caring about what is happening to him, he does this "I don't have time to think about any of that emotion stuff" and gets on with the task at hand. The problem for me is the pacing is off - the first 80% or so of the book takes place over 2? maybe 3 days, in which Gerry has rather a traumatic time of it.


Like a total recall kind of trauma (except, not just a wife, but a wife and two beloved daughters). Also that he might not actually be a real person, just an AI. Or not. He's not sure.

He loses his entire life, gains a new one, becomes a techxorcist - a white hat hacker of "evil" AI's and viruses, apparently falls in love, makes a new best friend, is betrayed, is shot multiple times, is tortured, saves an entire civilization, possibly two, and then meets a whole lot of family he didn't know he had. I guess he's right, who has time to think about things when they're happening at that pace.

That said I did enjoy it. It was a fast and easy read, and as a programmer, I wasn't eye rolling at the hacker tricks, and there's even a couple of in-jokes made about the overused trope (see the movie Hackers, or Swordfish or... well any movie ever) that hacking involves manipulating objects in a poorly rendered VR simulation. When faced with having to do exactly that, Gerry asks "Can't I just send some code" and his accomplice answers something to the effect "sure, but this is more fun to look at". Which isn't to say any of the tech in this book is current world, it's not, but the tech is handled in a way that is not only internally consistent, but doesn't read like a chef trying to write a programming manual. Or you know, me trying to write a cookbook.
The sidekicks, Gaz and Petal are also fun, but a little flat. Gaz has almost no development, he's practically exposition man for half the book - and since there's not overly much exposition going on, he's not got much to say for a lot of pages.
But the ending takes a bit of a left turn into crazy land, and just when it's about to come to a point that would have made sense to end the book (Gerry on his way back to rescue a friend, and set his world back in order), out of nowhere, it takes another even weirder turn and out of nowhere the biggest most wtf cliffhanger ever. Aliens. Out of nowhere. Not a mention or hint of them anywhere in the book up until now, and then whoa Nelly.
To be clear, I understand this is the first of a trilogy, but there was already a natural break here. This story was wrapped up, and the next step was clear, but hadn't begun yet. The sudden spin out into real cliffhanger land really felt like a tacked on "Stay tuned for what happens next week!" sales tactic, not a natural progression of the story, and it really soured it for me. Even if it was a natural progression, it would have made a kick-ass beginning for book two - I even wouldn't have objected if it had been chapter one of book two and tacked on at the end as a teaser. True, the distinction is quite slender, but for me, quite real. It's the difference between "I know there's more parts to this" and the hard sell.

Anyway, for anyone who stuck with me this long, here's the trailer to the hilariously abysmal Circuitry Man, in all it's psychedelic 80's low budget glory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcw4LtLa4s4 show less

Beta by Colin F. Barnes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Book 2 in series with 4 and a "prequel", even the blurb is a spoiler.

I liked it. It is fast paced, the protagonist and co-protagonists are interesting and likable and forever in dire straights. The antagonists are deliciously evil and seemingly impossible to overcome.

Colin is an indie author I've blatantly called amateur, but he is professionally courageous as a writer and clearly understands the craft.

I both read the ebook and listened to the show more audiobook simultaneously. Marc Vietor is an excellent narrator.

Technical/My Library info:
Beta/Assembly Code "Code Breakers"/"The Techxorcist", Book 2

Being human is no longer enough.

9781501035906
1501035908
World Catalog (Assembly Code - The Techxorcist, Book 2)
Goodreads (ebook)
Goodreads (audiobook)
Amazon (Kindle)
Amazon (Audible)
Google Books
Library Thing
ISFDB

"Blurb"
The fanatical Red Widows sweep destruction across the abandoned lands. Their aggression threatens to destroy the city Gerry had risked his life to save. Petal, the woman Gerry has come to love is dying. The despotic cabal, The Family, demand he brings her to them, but she's missing, running from the Widows, searching for the truth of her origins before it's too late. When their paths cross, Petal and Gerry will hold the fate of humankind in their hands—if they can survive the malevolent digital entity that stalks them from the shadows. Code Breakers: Beta is a post-apocalyptic, near-future thriller that will delight fans of The Matrix, Neuromancer, and Blade Runner.



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