The Electric Church

May 31, 2010
Avery Cates's reputation as a respectable hit man is destroyed when he's implicated in the murder of a cop. And before he knows what he's doing, he finds himself coerced into assassinating the leader of the Electric Church, the fastestgrowing and deadliest religion in this dystopian future of a unified world government. Somers's science fiction thriller has an acerbic wit; it's an enjoyable listen enhanced by Tod McLaren's deep and edgy voices that bring Cates and a host of other equally quirky characters to life. McLaren is generally consistent with his accents and outlooks: he shifts from character to character with ease and creates an authentic and idiosyncratic protagonist whose mixture of hardness, attitude, and self-mockery are delivered with admirable control. An Orbit hardcover.

July 30, 2007
Somers packs his techno-thriller debut with enough gunplay and explosions to satisfy a Hollywood producer. Earth is now the System of Federated Nations, governed by the Joint Council and policed by local cops and the hard-nosed System Security Force (SSF). Most people are have-nots, struggling to get by through any means. Avery Cates is one of them, a respected 27-year-old bodyguard and assassin for hire working in Old New York. When Avery kills a cop by mistake, SSF chief Richard Marin hauls him in and gives him two choices: execution or taking on the Herculean task of assassinating the founder of the Electric Church, which creates converts by killing people and transplanting their brains into robot bodies that quash free will. The job would be a lot easier if Avery wasn't being hunted by a couple of cops who don't know when to quit. Somers's plot sprints along through the nicely detailed (if slightly unoriginal) world, but the characters are the real prize in this entertaining near-future noir.