When author Michael Crichton passed away, he left some rather large shoes to fill in the world of science fiction. Crichton had an amazing ability to craft a plot, taking the highly technical sciences and turn them into easy to understand, fascinating details in the story. The readers never felt as if an overwhelming amount of useless, dry knowledge was being forcefed to them.
And then The Demi-Monde: Winter by author Rod Rees was released by HarperCollins in 2011. If there was ever an author to fill Crichton's shoes, it would definitely be Rees. Part hardcore SF, steampunk, and fantasy, his story is tight, full of action, with well created characters and plot. It's the kind of story that you will not want to put down because you have to know what's going to happen next. I've spent a weekend with little to no sleep because of this book -- time well spent.
We see much of the action through the eyes of Ella, an 18 year old woman trying to keep a roof over her head, get the money for her education, and keep her brother out of the drug pit. Then, she's given an opportunity that's a bit too good to be true -- a million dollars to do something important. She finds out what that something is.
The military has created an artificial world that they call "the Demi-monde," specifically to train their soldiers how to fight in the current undisciplined, chaotic wars of the terrorists. Living terrorists from history have been duplicated into the Demi-Monde -- known as "dupes," the likes of Spanish Inquisitions monster Tomas de Torquemada rubs elbows with Nazi Reinhard Heydrich and self-named beast Aleister Crowley. But something has gone wrong -- the early trainees are caught inside and the US President's daughter has gotten pulled into the Demi-Monde. And someone is convinced that only an immediately unwilling Ella can get in and out safely, and rescue them all. With an increased amount of money, Ella relents but once inside, she finds out that the Demi-Monde is beginning to spill over into the real world and the lines are blurring.
I love Ella; she's sassy and full of fire. She's also a no-nonsense kind of person. Which gets her in trouble on occasion but her knight in shining armor is there in the form of Vanka, a registered psychic and closet rebel. Norma Williams, the aforementioned daughter, has that defiance and anger that one would expect a person in her position would throw at her captors. Trixiebelle, her would be jailor, is trying to live a lie for her father's sake and still hanging on every word that Norma untters. The female characters are stuck in a world of misogyny and still manage to keep their inner strength. The bad guys are true to form, true to historical type, but never once venture in to the caricature.
This is not a thin book to be sure, but it's an easy read. The details sucked me into the world, painting a realistic picture of the Demi-Monde as if it truly did exist in reality. I had absolutely no trouble suspending my disbelief as willingly as I possibly could. Not only does the author draw from real people in history, but pop culture terms appear. The super computer that holds the Demi-Monde and gives it life is called ABBA. The religions of UnFunDaMentalism and the Suffer-O-Gettes (as in Make-Men-Suffer-O-Gettes) add that grounding touch of little things added in the most fascinating places. I was hanging on every page of a tight plot that has nothing that shouldn't be there. It was never so complicated that I couldn't follow along and there was never a slow moment in the book. Nothing wasted, nothing glossed over.
The Demi-Monde: Winter is the first in a series of four books to be released. If the other three are half as good as this one is, this author has a new fan. I will be reading them all, that's for certain and I highly recommend this book.
If you'd like to read The Demi-Monde: Winter, you can find your copy through all online booksellers as well as locally from Joseph-Beth Booksellers in the Lexington Green Mall on Nicholasville Road or Barnes & Noble in the Hamburg Pavilion Shopping Center on Man o' War Blvd.
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