Michelle Lang, Netherwood

Netherwood

Michelle Lang

Dorchester Shomi, Mar 2008, $6.99

ISBN: 9780505527592

Sheriff Talia Fortune is the prime owner of FortuneCorp. Her current assignment combines her law enforcement duties with her role as the head of the mega-corporation. She seeks her Netherwood cyber lover Kovner known as Avenger for his wanton destruction of technological gizmos on the colony Fresh Havens.

Talia enters the Netherwood cyberspace where she meets Kovner in a forest. She tells him she must arrest him, but he insists the Singularity has begun; artificial intelligent computers have superseded humanity as the prime species. If something is not done soon, mankind will become extinct. To succeed he and his band of merry outlaws need Talia on their side, but she hesitates as all he says contradicts all she knows about the Grid and reality.

NETHERWOOD combines The Matrix with Charlton Heston's sci fi end of the world flicks like Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man in a fine thriller. The story line is action-packed from the moment the heroine goes after her 'terrorist' former lover and never slows down until the final confrontation. Fans will appreciate this exciting futuristic science fiction in which Fresh Haven and Netherwood seem real and the extinction plausible, but the lead couple never comes across as more than just comic book heroes trying to save a way of life (just who's is the question).

Harriet Klausner