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The Eternal Prison (2009)

by Jeff Somers(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

031602211X (ISBN13: 9780316022118)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Orbit

series

Avery Cates

review 1: This 3rd book in the Avery Cates series is perhaps the best so far. While The Digital Plague felt like it was just a retelling of The Electric Church, Jeff Somers has taken a different direction with this one. I've compared this character before to Robert E. Howard's Conan and I think the comparison holds up. Both are incredibly grim and violent men with a rough sense of honour and justice. They both rampage through their stories with contempt for or trying to destroy their civilization, and while they are more than capable of killing ordinary enemies, it's when they're put up against the supernatural monsters that lay at the heart of their stories that they really shine. Jeff Somers world is a cyberpunk world of high-tech, cyborgs, dystopia, martial law, and artificia... morel intelligence, all in an advanced state of decay. It starts off with Avery Cates as a broken man, completely defeated without even the will to live anymore as he's rounded up by the SSF system cops and sent to a hellish prison to stay in limbo. This is told through flashbacks alongside another narrative of the present day Avery Cates, who is whole again and on a mission, killing his way to his goal. He manages to complicate the plot just enough to make it interesting but not enough to be convoluted and pointless. The whole story is so over-the-top, nihilistic and bloody that it takes the single-minded and humourless Avery to make it believable. "... the walls leaked like a gutshot wound." This kind of exposition is typical and so so SO delicious, I loved every minute of it. Somers's Act 3 takes off in a different direction, and ends in a pyrrhic victory (like The Empire Strikes Back ends in a pyrrhic victory). This is an amazing pulp-story. It's fast-paced, un-sophisticated and direct. It's only science-fiction so far as the science pops its head up like a mole to be smashed into bits. I highly recommend this book to sci-fi fans who aren't bothered by brutal violence and nihilism, and especially to young men who normally don't like books because they're 'boring'. You can read it as a stand-alone story but it's worth starting out the series with The Electric Church which also very good.
review 2: This book really took me for a ride, as it was very action packed and mind blowing. Near the middle, it got really interesting with who was telling the story, because it always seems to be two people(which are the same person), and then when those two people met, a huge plot twist unfolds. Every page turn brought another joke/action scene/plot twist. This book also went at just the right pace of time, even if it was slightly confusing who was dead and alive at what times and whatnot. I highly recommend this book to any si-fi fans. It may not be about zombies... or vampires... but it has all the action and suspense as any zombie apocalypse. Another good thing about this book is that it doesn't need you to read the previous stories in the series as it doesn't refer back to them as much, even though I highly recommend reading the whole series! less

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