Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Thriller/Speculative Fiction
Approximate word count: 80-85,000 words
Availability
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Author:
“I was born
into a blue-collar family in Liverpool, England. Like my peers, I grew up
working with my hands until an uncanny aptitude for building computer software
allowed me to trade overalls and hard-hat for a suit and tie.
I
immigrated to the US in the early 90s, became an American citizen, and lived
the American dream.
After
twenty successful years in the corporate world, I turned my back on eighty-hour
weeks and quarterly results and bought a run-down, dog-friendly motel in
Carolina Beach, North Carolina. A close friend still refers to this decision as
a brain fart; but life is a one-time play, and no one can write, and run a
public company.
When the
worlds of finance and real estate went stir-crazy in 2005, I sold the business
and moved to Lake Lure, North Carolina where, in addition to helping my wife
manage a small herd of llamas, I am, at last, fulfilling my life's ambition to
write speculative fiction.”
Pete is
also Books and Pals most prolific pal; if you read his reviews you’ll get an
idea of the kind of scrutiny he’s put his own book through. This is his first
book, with another work in progress expected to be released in the spring of
2013 summer of 2014. For more, visit Pete’s website.
Description:
“Allah’s
Revenge,” an Islamic terrorist group, terrorizes the world using a weapon
developed with nanotechnology. Quinn, an English cop, is determined to find and
stop them.
Appraisal:
I’m a big
thriller reader. Speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, and similar),
not so much. What I liked about the speculative fiction portion of NanoStrike is that it involved
technology that, while not here today, could be. Nanotechnology is on the
leading edge of science; the nanotech inventions and discoveries that figure in
this story aren’t hard to imagine as possible in the near future.
There’s
also a lot to like about the thriller portion of NanoStrike. Building on a premise (both political and
scientific) that could happen someday, it has a likeable protagonist, necessary
in my opinion to draw the reader in. If you don’t care about the protagonist,
it’s hard to care about his success.
What I
found interesting is that, while not wanting the bad guys to succeed, I still
found some of them sympathetic at times, and even the most evil of the
conspirators was involved in doing something that could have had a positive effect
on the world. Since thrillers are plot driven, character development often
doesn’t get as much attention, resulting in secondary characters that are
cartoonish or caricatures. Barber avoided this mistake, while still leaving no
doubt about who the good guys and bad guys were. Thriller fans should find NanoStrike, with its combination of
timely concerns and speculation about what the future might hold, a very worthy
read.
FYI:
Some adult
language and situations
Format/Typo Issues:
No
significant issues.
Rating: ***** Five stars
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