Antimatter Blues
A Mickey7 Novel
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4.3 • 16 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Edward Ashton's Antimatter Blues is the thrilling follow up to Mickey7 in which an expendable heads out to explore new terrain for human habitation.
Summer has come to Niflheim. The lichens are growing, the six-winged bat-things are chirping, and much to his own surprise, Mickey Barnes is still alive—that last part thanks almost entirely to the fact that Commander Marshall believes that the colony’s creeper neighbors are holding an antimatter bomb, and that Mickey is the only one who’s keeping them from using it. Mickey’s just another colonist now. Instead of cleaning out the reactor core, he spends his time these days cleaning out the rabbit hutches. It’s not a bad life.
It’s not going to last.
It may be sunny now, but winter is coming. The antimatter that fuels the colony is running low, and Marshall wants his bomb back. If Mickey agrees to retrieve it, he’ll be giving up the only thing that’s kept his head off of the chopping block. If he refuses, he might doom the entire colony. Meanwhile, the creepers have their own worries, and they’re not going to surrender the bomb without getting something in return. Once again, Mickey finds the fate of two species resting in his hands. If something goes wrong this time, though, he won’t be coming back.
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In the 1,000 years since humanity dispersed into Ashton's vibrant vision of far-future space, none of the limited contact between humans and aliens has ended well, but now retired expendable Mickey must cozy up to the Nifleim colony's native "creepers" to retrieve an antimatter bomb that was lost in the previous novel, Mickey7. As an Expendable, Mickey's died and come back six times already, but now he feels his life is precious. He's got Nasha, a feisty recon pilot, to snuggle with; a job cleaning the hungry colony's rabbit hutches; and a daredevil friend, Berto, he doesn't want to lose. Still, when duty calls via vengeful colony commander Marshall, he's off on a series of free-wheeling adventures among two sets of warring creepers to get that bomb back. If he fails, there'll be no coming back this time. Ashton's breezy characters, especially a few alien creepers able to communicate with the humans, delight, and the grungy details of colony life are rendered as realistically as Mickey's hunger pangs. It's good fun with a surprisingly effective closing twist that sci-fi fans will savor.
