Customer Reviews

Metal Fatigue

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A city has shut itself off from the rest of the country, after nuclear disaster. This is a reasonably near future style of post-apocalyptic scenario.

The Metal Fatigue is referencing the fact that cut off from everything else, the technology they have is slowly failing, and is unable to be replaced.

They have been invited to come back, but deadly crimes are happening to hamper this. A grizzled investigator type has to work out why.

If you like hard SciFi with a gritty edge then "Metal Fatigue" is as good as it gets. Unlike a lot of near future stories, Williams avoids tedious explanations of "how we came to be here". Utilising well drawn characters based on mythic stereotypes, the landscape is familar enough for us to fill in the gaps as he unrolls a very unsettling future.

The main character, Phil Roads is one of those grizzled loners with a heart of gold and a guilty secret who skirts a taut line between anti-hero behaviour and unbelievable behaviour. And the technology is very much part of life, sparing us the "gee whiz look at this infrared pop-up toaster" garbage that less expert writers get lost in.

Overall this is an excellent thriller in a very real setting that happens to be sometime in our not too distant future. If you like Peter F Hamilton's Greg Mandel character ("Nano Flower", "A Quantum Murder" etc) or Iain M Banks more edgy stuff ("Consider Phelebas", "Use of Weapons", "Excession" etc) you are very likely to enjoy this book.

Sean Williams is rapidly becoming one of my favourite 'near future' science fiction authors. This, his first novel, is set in a rapidly decaying utopian city that shut itself off from the rest of the world as 'the troubles' began. The city is somewhat self reliant, due in large to an experimental nuclear reator that is slowly but surely wearing out. Originally for medical isotopes, the reactor was hacked for power generation, and kept the city safe.

Our hero is a remnant of the times before the world fell apart. A member of the police, his job is to track down a killer, someone who is gruesomely murdering VIPs in the lead up to a very important meeting with a new coalition from the outside. This meeting has the chance of revitalising a decaying city, and saving those within, if only those who support the plan don't get killed first.

Nanotech, biomods, genetic engineering, this book has it all, and a halfway decent mystery. Sean Williams is Australian, [like me] and it shows in some of his themes. A good book.