AFTERBURN

In Green’s speculative novel set in a future war-torn America, a biracial political prisoner becomes part of a plan to take down his former childhood friend, who’s now a white supremacist terrorist.

In 2070, in the aftermath of a horrific second civil war, white people are a militant minority, and a Latine government is in power. (“The gringos are simply reaping what they sowed,” said one citizen years ago. “It’s our turn now.”)The White House has relocated to Los Angeles after the detonation of a radwaste-filled terrorist bomb in Washington, D.C. The perpetrator was Alex Weber, aka Hagen, a fugitive white supremacist leader/influencer in the “Nibelung” movement with massive resources, including advanced military technology. The narrative hints that President Maximillian Guerrero allows this public enemy to remain free to justify an authoritarian state that includes DNA tracking, surveillance drones, and general martial law crackdowns. Internment camps fill with Hagen’s presumed followers; Alton Lucas, a Los Angeles teacher, languishes amid crowds of violent white males awaiting Hagen’s promised “return.” Alton is secretly part Hispanic, and he knew Alex as a teenager; he also had a brief affair with Alex’s ex-girlfriend, Kiara Cunningham. Factions in the Guerrero regime know about Alton’s past, and in a rogue operation, they manipulate him as part of a plan to find Alex and Kiara before the terrorists unleash fresh horror on the eve of a historic Mars mission. Green’s novel explosively tackles hot-button issues in a milieu where practically nobody seems to possess spotless morality, except perhaps the compromised and confused Alton, who perceives a desire for power driving the extremists. “Alex’s head on a spike sounds pretty good, honestly,” he says at one point; “Could you live with Kiara’s head on the spike next to his?” responds his interlocutor, Deputy Undersecretary for Defense Diana Áquilar. The action moves at a fast clip, even if half the narrative is given over to a lengthy flashback to Alton’s adolescent heartache, and there’s a somewhat perfunctory home stretch in which fiery action, battleground reversals, and cyborg gunplay threaten to overwhelm weightier concerns.

An action-oriented tale of a high-tech future of bigotry and violence.