Kenneth Mark Hoover Feverblau

Feverblau

Kenneth Mark Hoover

Five Star, Dec 2005, $25.95, 290 pp.

ISBN 1594143617

The earth of the future is a dark and bleak place; mankind is almost extinct thanks to Feverblau, a virus that killed women. Only a small percentage of females survived and they are regarded as valuable possessions put in Union Houses where men pay for the privilege of having sex with them. They don't bear children because their uteruses are taken from them to mix with sperm in an artificial environment to protect males that will eventually fight in the continual wars that plague the planet.

Nikolai Sholokhov is on two week leave from Luna and the top secret Star Whisper project that he has been working on for eighteen months. He is looking forward to his first "privilege" at the Union House but before that happens he meets the top Mafioso who is interested in the alien signals picked up by the radio telescope on Luna. After that encounter, he is asked by a person out after curfew if Nikolai will share his quarters with her. Nikolai agrees to this to only find out that the young man is really a woman Galina who is being transported to a Union House. She escapes during a city riot and both know if Nikolai is caught with her, he will be killed. Yuri Tur who befriended Nikolai has connections powerful enough to get them out of Moscow and Nikolai wants to try to escape to one of the habitats orbiting earth with Galina because they love one another in a world where such a thing is forbidden.

Most of the action takes place in Moscow as an innocent Nikolai gets involved with the Russian underground, the resistance movement and the totalitarian government that wants to see him dead. He loses his innocence very fast but his love for Galina gives him strength of purpose that makes him a very appealing hero. There is a lot of action and political intrigue in the exciting futuristic thriller and the characters who populate this book make the storyline realistic and believable.

Harriet Klausner