I met C.R. Asay at LTUE this year. She’s an ex-military counter-intelligence science-fiction writer living in the Salt Lake Valley who recently had a book published by a local small publisher, “Heart of Annihilation”. She’s also a nice person and fun to talk to. That’s one of the dangers of LTUE–I usually get to know an author as a person before I get a chance to read their books and know whether or not I like their writing. So it’s usually with trepidation that I approach the book later on, hoping I’ll like the book as much as I like the person.
Fortunately, I enjoyed “Heart of Annihilation.”
Kris Rose is an army counter-intelligence specialist at an army base south of Salt Lake City whose policeman father disappeared under mysterious circumstances. She soon finds herself in over her head when she uncovers a covert conspiracy by fellow soldiers to steal ammunition to use in killing suspected aliens.
Meanwhile, in some alternate dimension, Caz Fisk is tasked with continuing the work of her parents in developing a superweapon in a society that frowns upon such things.
Other than a brief prologue, there is little to tell us how these two women and their respective story lines might be connected, but Asay knits the two stories together well through a series of flashbacks for Caz while remaining grounded in Specialist Rose’ story, which unfolds chronologically.
This book could be alternately titled, “Kris Rose’ and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.” She gets beaten up, shot, zapped, smacked around–and that’s just by her comrades. Not that Thurmond, her “battle-buddy” fares much better. The two of them are put through so much abuse that Indiana Jones’ experiences in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” might seem like a day at the playground.
Add to that a constantly-changing situation in which it’s difficult to know who Kris can trust, complete with revelations that might even make it hard for her and Thurmond to even trust each other.
I’ll admit it took me a while to get into the book. It was interesting enough, but I had some difficulty investing in it, and when I had to stop reading one night I found it easy to not pick the book up again for a while. But I’m glad I did keep going. It got more interesting soon thereafter and I found it easy to finish from there. Just know that everything makes sense (with a few unexplained–but inconsequential–loose ends) by the finale.
I’ve learned to be cautious about small publishers after reading a few books produced by such that really suffered for editing. While there are a few things they missed, this book seems to have been fairly well edited and of a higher quality than I’ve come to expect.
There is a significant amount of violence in this book, and Asay is not shy with her gore, though not purposely graphic. There’s no sex and, for military folk, mild swearing. Only the level of gore might lift it above YA-level sensibilities. I won’t have any trouble letting my fourteen-year-old read this.
Asay tells a complex, difficult story well. As a writer, I can appreciate the difficulty of what she accomplished here in balancing two stories and revealing information in both without either blowing the surprises to come or blatantly cheating to avoid giving too much away. There may have been a little too little revealed early on, perhaps, which might have been why it took me so long to really invest. But over-all, she pulled off a complex story structure well.
What I did find interesting is how this novel supported a theory I heard once that character description isn’t as important as the writer might think. The reader may pick up on one or two key characteristics, but largely they’ll create their own mental picture of what a character looks like. I certainly found that to be true here. I pictured Kris Rose to look like Asay, frankly, even though she was clearly described as having different features. And Thurmond? I don’t even remember how Asay described him. I pictured him as a black man, though I’m pretty sure there were clues to the contrary.
“Heart of Annihilation” is worth a read, and I’m looking forward to more C.R. Asay books in the future.