Blackout

Blackout (2011) Rob Thurman

I. Love. Rob. Thurman.

There it is. I’m tempted to never ever learn anything about her personal life for fear she’ll one day go all Orson Scott Card on me, and if I lost these books the way I lost Ender’s Game, I believe I would be mortally crushed.

What is most fascinating about this book is that six books into this series you could read this book knowing absolutely nothing about the series and not miss a thing.

That said, fans of the series will love the way she takes this character we’ve spent six books learning about, and turns him into a stranger.

Cal wakes up on a beach surrounded by dead monsters knowing only he is a killer. His past is gone and he is a blank slate with nothing but a lot of weapons and a wallet full of money and fake IDs.

I was wearing a leather jacket, sodden and ruined. Something was weighing down the right pocket more heavily than the left. I put my hand in and closed it around something oval shaped. I was vaguely hoping it was a wayward clam that had climbed in while I was snoozing in the tide. That hope choked and fell, dead as the floating monsters. In the moonlight, I’d opened by fingers to see a grenade resting against my palm. There was a cheerful yellow smiley face on the side. The hand-painted, slightly sloppy circle smirked at me.

Have a nice day!

I looked up at the sky, the beaming boom, and said my first words, the first words I could remember anyway. Baby’s first new words in his brand-new life.

“What the fuck?”

He also has–as he quickly discovers, an innate ability to lie, as well as a tremendous survival instinct. He quickly finds food and shelter and tries to figure out who he is and what he is going to do with himself.

Although Cal has lost who he is, his attitude and sarcasm remain, which makes what could be painful and cloying an absolute joy, as always.

I was a gun person, but I kept around a sword or two just in case. I also had a flamethrower.

Of all the things I’d found out so far… I think I liked that about myself the most. Gotta love a flamethrower.

No matter what happens, the heart of the books remain the same: a love story between two brothers, with monsters and swords and lots and lots of guns.

If you think that sounds mushy and like something you don’t want to read, well, you’re wrong.

I love this series. I love the characters, I love the dialog–hell, I even love the covers–and I love how even six books into the series Cal and Niko continue to surprise me.
Rating: 10/10

Published by ROC

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