Herokiller
A Novel
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4.3 • 26 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“An incredible new voice in sci-fi. The kind of writer who keeps you turning the pages long into the night.”—A.G. Riddle, bestselling author of The Atlantis Gene and Pandemic
Ready Player One meets Gladiator in this high-octane thriller that mixes black-ops espionage with fight-to-the-death combat in the arena.
In the near future, the line between entertainment and brutality has blurred. Mysterious billionaire Cameron Crayton is a household name from televised spectacles in which prison inmates fight to the death, but his old shows pale in comparison to his new event, The Crucible, a gladiatorial tournament anyone can enter. The winner is promised unimaginable wealth and glory . . . if they’re able to survive a series of globally broadcast fight-to-the-death matches with medieval weaponry against the world’s most fearsome fighters.
Former black-ops operative Mark Wei wants nothing more than to be left alone to drink after sacrificing everything?including his family?in America’s covert Cold War II against China, a war won largely because of him. But there are rumors that Crayton’s background and business dealings involve shady connections to foreign powers, and soon Mark is convinced to reluctantly dust off his training, strap on a sword and armor, and enter the tournament arena as an undercover agent.
It’s the most dangerous assignment he’s ever been given, and Mark quickly finds himself not just fighting for his life in the arena against trained killers, but racing to expose The Crucible’s founder’s secrets while navigating a viral phenomenon in which the stakes are literally life and death. . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tassi (the Earthborn Trilogy) successfully merges elements of The Hunger Games and Mission Impossible in this action-packed thriller set in a near future in which reality shows feature homicide as entertainment. Mark Wei survived an undercover assignment for the CIA inside China, but the aftermath cost him his wife and child. After a Supreme Court ruling shuts down the reality show Prison Wars, in which convicts battled to the death, its producer, the mega-rich Cameron Crayton, devises The Crucible. He invites fighters from across the U.S. to a tournament whose participants advance to the final rounds by killing their opponents. The winner will take home a billion dollars. Mark's former handler, Gideon Gellar, who believes that Clayton has corrupted much of the U.S. government possibly at the behest of the Chinese persuades Mark to pose as a contestant to learn the truth. Tassi pulls no punches as he depicts Mark's battle to survive the violent ordeal without completely losing his humanity in the process. Mark's adversaries are fleshed out into real people, adding tension to the fights and getting readers invested in the story en route to a satisfying climax. Readers who can handle the explicit violence (and the contradiction of a book that showcases gory deaths while decrying media showcasing gory deaths) will enjoy this heart-pounding and ironically cinematic novel.
