Like most series fiction, some of Somers' Avery Cates books are better than others. On his fourth outing, we find Avery conscripted into a cybernetically augmented military and then sold to the highest bidder. Since Avery rarely gets anything other than the short end of the stick, he winds up working for two of his worst enemies. Oh, did I mention that they have the ability to kill him with the touch of a button? They can.
The plot revolves around a job, to kidnap (or maybe kill) a man who has created the ultimate cybernetic implant, maybe. The world is being ground into small pieces by the ongoing civil war between the military and the system cops, so Avery and his minders set off to travel half-way around the ruins of the world to infiltrate a city full of enemies. Sounds like suicide, but then again that seems to describe most of the jobs that Avery has done in the past.
This is definitely the strongest volume in the series since The Electric Church
. Here, Avery is in his element: he has little to gain and nothing to lose, no friends, and no future. Somers is at his finest plotting the meat grinder that serves as Avery's life. A fine read.
