I've just finished reading The Electric Church by Jeff Somers. I'd recommend it strongly. It's a blisteringly exciting, brilliantly conceived cyber-noir-thriller-actionmovie-SF novel.
Somers is a clever high-octane writer, and has the knack of re-energising his storyline with new characters and fresh story elements every three or four chapters...so the narrative never lulls or sags, it just keeps hurtling along to its excellent climax.
It's also a wonderfully vivid piece of writing; you can see every image, you can smell the fear. And the story premise is a peach - it's about a Church which promises eternal life by turning its disciples into cyborgs.
For the first time in human history - a religion which delivers on its promises!
Somers has been enslaved by his publishers for some time, and this has clearly inspired him to do his best work. For further details of the Electric Church, which alarmingly appears to actually exist, check out what happens when you click on this full stop.
September 29th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
My goodness--thank you for such kind words! Really glad you enjoyed the book, especially since I'm looking forward to reading Debatable Space--which, people should know, is excerpted at the end of The Electric Church.
September 29th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I hear from a highly reliable and irrefutably impartial source (er, your agent) that Digital Plague is EVEN better...
I'm well chuffed that I'll be excerpted at the end of Electric Church, and flattered also.
Anyway that's enough nice stuff. Tell me more about the evil of your corporate masters...
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:02 pm
I ordered this one from the latest Forbidden Planet catalogue, so very pleased to learn there is much coolness within those pages (and beneath what seems to be a great Jae Lee cover)!
Once I'm done with Moorcock's The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius it's some Electric Church going for me.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
The cover is indeed great...
Many years since I read Jerry Cornelius - maybe I should get my duster out and revisit those books.
Enjoy Electric Church!
October 9th, 2007 at 8:02 am
I'd better ask for a review copy then
For some reason, I'd been trying to resist it ... I don't know why.
Excerpted in what way? I'm just being dumb, probably
Nice one, anyway!
Best,
~Chris
The Book Swede
October 9th, 2007 at 9:21 am
I think you'll enjoy it Chris...
There's a mad ELECTRIC CHURCH offer from Orbit at the moment offering a prize of anti-surveillance technology to protect you from electronic monks. The gizmos include a wallet with a built-in Faraday cage...I thought at first it was just a wild spoof, but all the gadgets appear to be real and on sale from an actual site! The world is clearly stranger than I realised....(Or am I being duped?)
The excerpting is a new Orbit scheme affecting the mass market paperbacks....ELECTRIC CHURCH will have the first few chapters of DEBATABLE SPACE at the back, DEBATABLE SPACE will have the first few chapters of some other Orbit novel (don't yet know what), etc etc, linking all the Orbit authors in a massive virtual daisy chain.
It's a cool idea because it means you finish one book and immediately get ideas about whioh book you should buy next...