Marc D. Giller, Prodigal

Prodigal

Marc D. Giller

Bantam, Oct 2006, $12.00, 416 pp.

ISBN 0553903012

In an unspecified time in the future, governments have been replaced by corporations known as the Collective. The Assembly consists of members from each collective and hammerjacks are plugged into the information network to ferret out secrets from different corporations to give to their employers. Lea Prism is a former hammerjack who was part of the terrorist organization, Inru that wanted to destroy the sentient computer Lyssa.

Now Lea protects the A.I. and the organization she wanted to destroy as well as hunting down operatives of the Inru organization. Her search takes her to the radioactive wasteland of Chernobyl where she sees several humans in stasis that are now dead. At the same time on Mars, a hammerjack on the ship Almacantar finds a signal in the code of the information network; when they land on Mars they find a hidden hideaway inside a volcano containing six Security Forces people alive in stasis. They are taken aboard the ship where suspicions surface about their true station and nature. These two events are linked and could mean the end of mankind unless they listen to the leader of the Inru organization and Lea, an ex-Inru operative.

People who are not familiar with the events that took place in HAMMERJACK and are not computer literate may have a difficult time fully comprehending some terminology and events, yet overall the audience will enjoy this exciting, fast-paced, science-fiction thriller. The heroine must navigate her way through corporate greed, terrorist goals and an artificial intelligence that contains the personality of the man she loved while saving the world from these very same forces. Marc. D. Giller extrapolates the present to give a realistic and grim picture of the future.

Harriet Klausner