Don Damassa's review of Blood Ocean can be found here.
"There's a fair amount of quasi-martial arts violence and a moderately puzzling mystery, but the real merit of this particular novel is the fine writing and the evocation of the protagonist's subculture. The best in this series that I've read so far."
To put that in perspective, this is the eleventh book set in the Afterblight Universe. Here's what I said in my last primer where I described trying to be a part of it early on:
"There's a fair amount of quasi-martial arts violence and a moderately puzzling mystery, but the real merit of this particular novel is the fine writing and the evocation of the protagonist's subculture. The best in this series that I've read so far."
To put that in perspective, this is the eleventh book set in the Afterblight Universe. Here's what I said in my last primer where I described trying to be a part of it early on:
As promised, here is your third and final primer for Blood Ocean. If you haven't read the first one, which discusses the Pali Boys, you can find it here. And if you haven't read the second one, which discusses character and setting, you can find that here.
So why did I write this? I mean besides the fact that I'm getting paid a fine sum of English pounds with worldwide distribution of a beautiful-looking paperback book. I can't include that in my reasons, because I never knew any of that when I first pitched Abaddon when they first started out way back when.
I don't know where I was at the time, but I do remember that I heard about a new publishing house called Abaddon Books and asked for their bible about Afterblight. I sent a quick pitch, and I mean quick, and I got back an email from Jon Oliver, then Editor-in-Chief of Abaddon, now Editor-in-Chief of both Abaddon and Solaris, that he was intrigued about the idea and would I send him a full pitch, which has a sample chapter as well as a chapter by chapter outline. So I found myself working on this for about a month. In fact, I finished the pitch while I was in a hotel room in Alexandria, Virginia, working on my laptop while the Steelers beat the Colts in the Superbowl.
My pitch at that time was about Native Americans in the Southwest, who must team up with an L.A. gang of biker samurai to fight off the Radiant Dawn - the white folks who want their blood. It was a damn good pitch. I sooo wanted to write that book. But the problem was that every Tom, Dick and English Harry submitted a pitch about Native Americans too.
Needless to say they didn't need me.
So I did what every other writer would do in my shoes... I sulked and wrote something else.
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