In Quantaman’s SF follow-up to Hot Wheels: Cool Assassins 2 (2020), the Dog Breakfast co-op springs back into action.

The year is 2076, and Dog Breakfast is a covert group of highly trained individuals that aim to fight for good. A member of Dog Breakfast named Marija uncovers a sex-trafficking ring in Los Angeles, which is merely the tip of an iceberg of criminal activity that leads to Ecuador, with a detour to Tijuana, Mexico. Dog Breakfast may have top-notch capabilities, but the group “doesn’t have resources to mend every injustice.” The journey to Mexico is required to get their hands on new funds; their destination is an establishment called Bar Nada, a strip club that also hosts a lucrative fight club. Once business is settled in Bar Nada, the group aims to take on some even nastier types in South America. The narrative also includes additional storylines, including the recovery efforts of a girl named Raven Rocksong who survived a shipwreck and is undergoing tough training that will lead to Dog Breakfast membership. Along the way, there are many futuristic details (with many terms defined in a glossary), including aspects of life in the cylindrical habitats known as soupcans, where people live in orbit around the Earth. This interspersing of SF aspects isn’t always seamless, though; just as the reader is getting into the flow of the narrative, there’s a multipage explanation of the 12 “psigns”—“formalized human senses” that include the usual five, but also unusual ones, such as urgency, balance, and warmth, among others; these may be vital to the Dog Breakfast ethos, but they’re tedious when all discussed together and at length. Still, lively action scenes are never far away, and later developments include tremendous events in which, for instance, “Twilight is eclipsed in a huge bonfire of billowy flame.” A lot happens in fewer than 400 pages, and although readers may not ultimately grasp every aspect of, say, life in a soupcan, they can always appreciate when a rumble results in 13 bodies “lying senseless in artificial comas.”

A relentless concoction of action and futuristic elements.

A futuristic novel focuses on a powerful team of operatives.

This epic SF adventure begins with a girl named Jen Marov. Jen may be small but she is strong and an excellent climber. When she travels to Paris with her family, she is even able to climb the Eiffel Tower. Jen winds up with a successful career in the circus before pursuing a love of mountain climbing. Where will she wind up later in life? As a member of a fierce, do-good-oriented yet covert organization called Dog Breakfast. It is the 2070s and life on Earth, while recognizable to readers, is also wildly strange. Humans still populate the planet and struggle with capitalism, technological innovations, and environmental changes. But they have also managed to broaden their horizons. So-called soupers (because their orbiting environments look something like giant soup cans) live in space. Then there are advancements like travel by zephyrs (referred to as “gasbags”) and a protein-heavy foodstuff called sclup. The story expands to cover everything from a metropolis suspended over Canada named Tsawwassen to the excitement of something called “slasherrock,” but the ultimate focus falls on Dog Breakfast and its members. They are a tough group who train, eat, and sleep together. They learn to do things like dodge bullets and of course stomp the bad guys (although, as one member asserts, “we try to avoid violent solutions”). Will Dog Breakfast be able to pull off a difficult attack on the world’s corporate elite?

To say there is a lot going on throughout Quantaman’s narrative would be an understatement. Aside from the tale’s many events, readers get a primer on everything from hexagonal cities to the breakdown of a fictional company’s stock price. Such explanations are occasionally even accompanied by uncredited illustrations. This fine attention to detail, reminiscent of the work of William Gibson, helps to create a full picture of humanity’s future endeavors. But some aspects are more creative than others. A palmslate is basically a computer tablet, which, for simplicity’s sake, could have just been called a computer tablet. A crèche, on the other hand, is a school that raises children from the ages of 2 to 18 with intriguing results. The plot is likewise highly detailed and always in motion. Action scenes are prevalent and varied. Bad guys are felled with mini-crossbows and good guys can deploy other people’s car air bags. Still, the backgrounds of some characters may be more extensive than necessary. For instance, one of the newer Dog Breakfast members, Nyssa, seems to be forever explaining her past as an indentured sex worker. Though her biography contains some true oddities, such as the sale of her virginity by her mother, the story could have made do with a brief flashback or two as opposed to a full information download. In addition, the inner thoughts of characters tend to be redundant, as when Jen remarks to herself, after a close call: “Too close for comfort!” Yet overall, the book delivers an ambitious action tale in a vivid landscape that manages to be both foreign and familiar.

A lively, techno-fueled caper.