The Electric Church is set in a future where the divide
between rich and poor is even bigger and very obvious. The rich are literally
above the poor in that they live in high buildings and travel by hover crafts.
The poor live on the streets and have to get by in any way they can with a
constant threat of death, either from other criminals or the police known as
the SSF. The SSF are highly trained killers, the slightest thing and if they
catch you then you can be tortured or even killed. Life in this time is not
easy by any stretch of the imagination.
It is set in New York and London, there are some landmarks
mentioned that everyone knows but are now just ruins. There have been a lot of
riots which has led to the destruction of the world as we know it now. Life
span is vastly reduced for the poor, the best way to earn money is to be a
criminal or earn money killing criminals. There aren’t many buildings that are
complete and lots of people are cramped into whatever room they can find. Food
and drink is difficult to get hold of too. Impromptu bars get set up in
buildings but only stay there a day or two before they are raided by the SSF
and get closed down. Everyone knows this is going to happen so there are hidden
exits from the building for the staff and in this case, one of the patrons.
The story follows Avery Cates, a criminal killer. He has
messed up and is on the run from the SSF. It’s not just the SSF that he needs
to worry about though. He also needs to worry about the Monks of the Electric
Church. The Monks are essentially cyborgs, mechanical bodies with human brains
in order for them to live forever preaching their message. However, they aren’t
humans, they’re programmed to preach and convert people to their church. Avery
gets recruited to do the biggest jobs of his life. He enlists the help of
specialised criminals; tech, transport and weapons specialists to help him do
the job. He isn’t used to being in a group so he needs to learn to trust the
others to do what he needs them to in order to fulfil their task.
This book is a fun action packed adventure set in an
oppressed, violent future. Avery, at twenty seven is a veteran killer. The
reason he has survived so long is that he is good at his job. He is also very
lucky. It’s sort of like a Big Brother type existence in that the SSF have
records on everyone and always seem to know where people are. They can also see
what people are doing on their computers, although there are some people who
have old computers that are not linked in to the System so they don’t know what
those people are doing. The book is not the best written but it’s now bad
either. I don’t read a lot of Sci-fi stuff so it took me a little while to get
into it and figure out what sort of world it was. After the first couple of
chapters it sucked me in and I really enjoyed it. You can relate to Avery as he
is trying to be the best that he can given the situation and doesn’t want to
just mindlessly kill people or hurt people. I do find books set in the future
interesting as it seems that technology just gets so advanced that nothing is
secret any more. It’s a bit scary really, especially as it may not be all that
unlikely.
Overall rating 4 out of 5
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