BATTLE TIDES

In Acuff’s SF novel, the first in a series, a soldier in hiding attempts to discover the secret of the ghost haunting his biosynthetic body.

The year is 2561. Human colonies have spread across the universe through the use of wormholes, and extreme genetic modification has progressed to the point where some people, like Jacques Bastille, have become very hard to kill. When Jacques wakes up in the middle of a dune-filled desert, one of his biosynthetic arms ripped from its socket, he looks up to find his spaceship wrecked and smoldering nearby. He has no idea how he got there—his mind is missing key information, and his memories seem to be spliced with those of another person, a test pilot on Earth named Dash Strouthers. Jacques’ first order of business is to fight off the reptile-like bounty hunters that shot him down. He steals their ship and heads to the edge of the settled universe to find out who wants him dead and why. There he visits Bender the Reek, the universe’s last living Reek (or Re-cycle geek), whose business is extending human life by illegally replanting consciousnesses in new bodies (or “meat-suits,” to use the industry parlance). Bender is the man who put Jacques in his current meat-suit; he’s also the one who tried to collect the bounty. Jacques forces Bender to reattach his arm but has to flee before he finds out why Bender has several tanks filled with meat-suit versions of the woman in Dash Strouthers’ visions: Dash’s beautiful, blue-haired Mizuke. As Dash’s consciousness grows stronger in Jacques’ body, the confused fugitive relies on the dead man’s piloting skills to survive on the treacherous frontier of space. As he goes, Jacques attempts to figure out his own past as a former king of the Ma’Kobi clan who retired in the midst of a conflict with an authoritarian warlord—as well as how he came to be linked with Dash Strouthers and a mysterious biosynthetic woman named Mizuke BLU.

The novel’s lore, particularly when it comes to genetic modification, is complex and jargon-heavy, but Acuff brings texture and humor to work, as well as the ability to humanize the characters, even those who aren’t recognizably human. Here a medic—who is described as looking more like a mechanic—appraises a patient: “She ain’t like us, man. She’s gentetically altercated. Total bonzai! She is stable. But inna computer terms, it’s more’n like, I dunno, sleep mode than a coma. Her skinbag is fixin’ ‘erself right up at a super high cycle, but her mind shows zippo activity.” The narrative’s DNA is at least three-quarters action movie, with scene after scene of fistfights, shootouts, explosions, and escapes. Acuff’s touch is light enough to handle the transitions between Jacques and Dash, though, and while readers will initially be pulled along by the set pieces, they will soon find themselves invested in the convoluted mystery of the protagonists’ origins. Most will return to find out what happens in the next volume.

An inventive, fast-paced SF thriller.