J. Barton Mitchell

Engineer Marcus Flynn has been sentenced to 11-H37 alongside the galaxy's most dangerous criminals. A hard labor prison planet better known as the Razor, where life expectancy is short all roads lead to dead ends.

At least until the Lost Prophet goes active...

In a few hours, prison guards and staff are evacuated, the prisoners are left to die, and dark mysteries begin to surface.

Yes, Razor is a prison planet. Well, more accurately the thin strip of land between the Cindersphere and eternal night. Prisoners are forced to mine xytrilium, the most sought after power source, one that fuels everything to the Crawlers used to mine xytrilium to computers and space ships. It's valuable and the Razor has the largest known deposit.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Marcus Flynn had been convicted of murder, a murder he didn't commit because he was planning to leave Mass-Dorian the company that designs and builds all equipment to mine xytrilium. On arriving on Razor, he meets James Maddox, a former Ranger prison guard who used to work on Razor until he killed his CO. Key, a prisoner on the Crawler Charon, has been tasked with killing Flynn. That doesn't go as planned and he and Key end up shackled together. Maddox is also nearly killed by one of the gangs on Charon.

It's not long until Lost Prophet, an evacuation protocol activates and everything turns into chaos. From there, they meet science experiments gone wrong and a planet about to be destroyed.

While the characters aren't that deep, they do keep the story going. Gable is a very dark character that has no morals or ethics. Zane seems like he should be the worst thing to exist ends up being a more morally inclined person than Gable. Key is angry at the universe. And others have contrary motives.

The plot is a bit predictable (messing around with alien artifacts that end up blowing up in your face and science experiments that backfire). This could easily translate into a movie with lots of explosions, guns, and gore.

Still, a decent enough read to be entertaining.… (meer)

From the description, I thought I'd probably dig this one.

However, two things completely surprised me. The first is, this book is damn near non-stop action (think the Armageddon movie, but a lot smarter, and no Steve Buscemi characters). So, that upped the ante, and upped my enjoyment.

The second thing is, I have a theory that J. Barton Mitchell is a big fan of Marvel comics, because he basically incorporates flourishes of the Absorbing Man, Luke Cage, Wolverine, and some other cool stuff, but ties it solidly to the world he's built. It comes off as a touch comic-booky, but not that much, and honestly, overall, I really enjoyed the hell out of it.

As for the story itself, it's every prison break movie ever made, but with a thick layering of SF all over it.

I'm not doing this book justice with this review, so I'll just say this: if you want a bunch of major action sequences along with your SF themes, this is your book. And I'll also say, I'm quite excited for the follow up.… (meer)

I am seriously in love with this series! It saddens me that there are less than 600 ratings on Goodreads for this book.

The story continues with Mira, Holt, and Zoey and their quest to get to the Severed Tower. It just so happens to be in the middle of an area called the Strange Lands where pretty much anything can happen. There are deadly anomalies that appear out if nowhere, and addictive artifacts that you have to be careful of as well.

I'm honestly so impressed by the creativity and idea behind this series. There are so many complex ideas I've never personally seen in other sci-fi, apocalyptic, or young adult books. I would highly recommend this book series to everyone! But especially those who like Fantasy, sci-fi, and apocalyptic genres.

I'm definitely super excited to read the last book and finish the series! And this is a world that I would LOVE to play in as a free roam video game!… (meer)

The beginning of this was pretty brutal. Marcus Flynn is sentenced to life on a prison planet for a murder he didn't commit. The first 50 pages or so are a series of brutal set pieces as the author introduces us to the characters and the unbelievable planet Razor. I almost gave up.

But then the novel starts to be more character driven and much more interesting. Something mysterious happens and the prisoners are set loose into terrifying situations. The various characters introduced in the beginning gradually find each other that the novel becomes a Quest.

I hadn't noticed on the jacket that this was the start of a trilogy but figured out about 2/3 in that it had to be or it would have a terrible ending, since there clearly weren't enough pages left to satisfactorily end the story. I'm happy to say that the book did have a satisfactory ending and the set-up for the 2nd book was good and in typical Quest story fashion. I don't want to give anything away but think of the middle book of "Lord of the Rings". Not saying this is as good as LOTR but structured similarly.

Other reviews have suggested this is supposed to be a YA novel. It didn't really feel that way to me.… (meer)