Hella and her mentor/partner, a humanoid bison named Stampede, are hired to guide a professor and his heavily armed crew through the Redblight, a wasteland in what used to be Oklahoma. The dangers of the Redblight are many, including various raiders, mutated creatures and an armadillo biker gang. What the professor is searching for remains a mystery to Hella. The whole contract stinks and the guides are second guessing the wisdom of accepting it.

I'd always liked the idea of TSR's Gamma World, a post-nuclear role-playing game that managed to be silly enough not to be depressing. I was happy to see Wizards of the Coast was not only reviving the game, but releasing novels set in that world.

I wasn't so excited to find out that the first Gamma World novel was being written by Mel Odom. My previous experience with Mel (another book based on a game, Hellgate: London: Exodus) wasn't a good one. That was also a game world that could have supported some very interesting fiction, but I just could not get past Mel's writing. It lacked even the most basic description and he tended to be repetitive with his phrasing.

I have to say, Mel's writing was much better this time out. Maybe he was under less editorial pressure. Maybe he's just improved as a writer. Either way, the description was lots better and the repetition that broke my suspension of disbelief was nowhere to be found. It wasn't brilliant writing, but at least it got out of the way as I read.

Today, the idea of global thermonuclear war seems kind of passé, so Gamma World's back-story/setting has changed significantly. In 2012, the Large Hadron Collider implodes causing multiple realities to intrude on ours. Society collapsed, geography changed and all sorts of strange and mutated creatures were set loose. And even now, a hundred and fifty years after what came to be known as 'the Big Mistake', reality has not quite settled down. 'Ripples' appear from time to time, opening temporary (and usually one-way) doorways onto other realities. The idea was unique, I admit. But I missed the nice, old-fashioned post-nuclear wasteland. Not that I'm blaming Mel for that.

Overall, Sooner Dead was an okay, enjoyable bit of pulp fiction. The story and its characters were entertaining enough. The plot rolled along smoothly and Mel did an okay job at laying out the newly ‘reimagined’ Gamma Terra.

It wasn't outstanding, but I didn't want to quit the book either. I wouldn't strongly recommend it, but I wouldn't warn a potential reader away. If the new Gamma World sounds interesting to you, you’ll probably enjoy the book well enough. If Mel wrote sequels I would probably pick them up. I do hope future Gamma World novels are a little stronger though. ( )