Blind Waves
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The author of Jumper returns with a near-future SF novel, set in an America whose coastline has been drowned by melting Antarctic ice.
In the world where hundreds of millions of people have been displaced from their homes by the Deluge--a hundred-foot-rise in sea level from melting ice caps--Partricia Beenan is lucky. She is still an American citizen with the right to live on the continent, unlike so many "wetfoots" whose homes lie deep under the waves or the refugees from nations now completely under water.
But Patricia's father chose to live on a floating city of New Galveston, instead of following his congresswomen wife to Washington, and go into the underwater salvage business. Now, several years after his death, it's Patricia's business and her city. She's a wealthy woman, on the city council, well known to local INS commander and the New Galveston police.
But none of that will help Patricia when she stumbles across a recently sunken freighter that has dozens of bodies chained up in its hold and clear evidence that it has been fired upon by an INS ship.
Patricia's evidence of a rogue operation within the INS brings her together with Thomas Beckett, a government investigator assigned to the case. Romance blossoms while they pursue and are pursued by the killers, into the heart of the conspiracy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The polar ice caps have melted and much of the United States is underwater in this imaginative new novel by the author of Helm. The government has been forced to relocate hundreds of millions of people dispossessed by the floods, while a few high-tech floating cities are protected by machine-gun-toting patrol boats. As the U.S. slides toward isolationism, Patricia Beenan, a deep sea salvager, discovers what remains of the Open Lotus, a bullet-riddled wreck packed with the bodies of illegal immigrants. She captures the horror on video, prompting the immediate interest of CNN but also of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which dispatches Commander Thomas Becket to assess whether the shooting was the result of INS error. As soon as Becket and Beenan meet, they fall madly in love. Their passion is thwarted, however, when they realize they are being pursued by thugs who want to make them disappear. Becket and Beenan learn that Beenan's mom, a congresswoman, plans to propose repealing the Emergency Immigration Act, thus embracing all of the refugees camped on the floating cities as citizens and rekindling the country's kinder, gentler side. Using Beenan's submersible, the dynamic love duo expose the opponents to this measure and their plot to sink some of the floating platforms. The SF element of this novel is much crisper than its romantic aspect, which overwhelms the pace and tenor of what might have been a breathless future thriller, but isn't.
