Welcome to bookchat! Where you can talk about anything; books, plays, essays, and audio books. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
Once again I’m reviewing a series that had a 3rd book come out. This one is the Mercenary Librarians series by the writing duo known as Kit Rocha. It is steamy sci-fi adventure. In book one, Deal With the Devil, we find out that the world fell apart and our heroes are a trio of women who are trying to make things better. They set up a library and community center, printing up books that help people, finding & restoring old tablets to get e-books out; and a 3D printer that makes helpful things. The setting is Atlanta, and anyone who doesn’t work for the Corporation is left scrounging for scraps. The Corporation does not like people who make life outside their domain more comfortable, and someone has hired mercenaries to kidnap/eliminate our librarian friends.
When people started trusting each other and working together at the community level, areas stabilized. And stable areas didn’t strike devil’s bargains with the TechCorps.
However, the librarians are more than they seem, and there’s something going on with the mercenaries… They end up teaming up against what they assume was the Corporation trying to to them all dirty. The mercenaries aren’t the only one who have been “improved on” by the Corporation and the Genetic Center; and our heroes have to team up to keep from being hauled back into their clutches. Nina, one of our Librarians, is a product of the cloning program, and she has incredible abilities. Which she uses to protect the family she’s made. And I did mention it’s steamy, didn’t I? Here is their blurb from their website:
Kind of like if someone hired Dystopian Captain America to kidnap Post-Apocalyptic Wonder Woman, and then they fell in love and turned their respective found families into the Justice Avengers. Also they bang in a thunderstorm.
They are a target because of the headquarters/community center. There’s books that they scan to lend out to the neighborhood, both practical stuff and movies, music — the things that make life worth living. But also, food. They help people raise and preserve food, so they are less desperate and likely to sign up to be part of the Corporation’s various schemes. They travel to find a legendary copy of the Library of Congress, some very exciting things happen along the way, there are revelations and all of our friends come together to truly make things better.
The second book, The Devil You Know, finds our friends searching for a group of children that a biotech company is planning to sell. They rescued one — long story — and found out about the others after they left that place. There are several unexpected reunions. We find out a lot more about Maya’s background. She’s the one who supposedly doesn’t have superpowers. But perfect recall of absolutely everything she hears really is one, and super useful in a fight. I loved seeing her discover her strengths. The soldiers have implants that 1) help them be super-soldiers 2) must be maintained by the Corporation, assuring their loyalty. You know what’s going to go wrong here; so while searching for the children and figuring out how they’ll rescue them when they do — they have to find a way to save themselves.
Ha! Their tweet describing the 3rd book:
The third book, Dance With The Devil…. it’s so good, I don’t know if I can tell you. People are rescued, secrets revealed. And love. Romantic love, family love. Lots of love. The Corporation finds a way to get worse. And the Genetic Center, they’ve been quietly doing their monstrous evil in the background. You think they stopped at enhancing soldiers, bodyguards and human external memory drives? Ha! Those things (because to a corporation, people are things) have free will. Yes, Dani and Rafe go undercover, of course things go spectacularly wrong. (Have you ever read about an undercover op that didn’t?) While they’re recovering from that, something truly awful happens. Our friends decide it is time to take the Corporation down, once and for all. No spoilers, but it ends in a good place. And with at least three more places that I could see for further stories. But Rocha have said that they are done for now:
These books are so, so, so good! Please, I beg you — if you can deal with action/adventure at all. If some violence, and some sex don’t bother you — I talk to people every day who don’t want any violence or sex, I get it. But: hope, defiance, people becoming better and stronger than they thought they could be; love and found/created family. Love makes you stronger, smarter, more resilient. And people can kick down empires for their family. Buy them if you can afford it, suggest them at your local public library (do this even if you can afford to buy them).
And hey — if you’re here reading this, you’re interested in books, how would you like to host a book chat? We have someone for next week, but especially needed are Weds. September 21st or the 28th, and later in the year. So, if you want to take your time writing a BookChat, and publish in October or November, that actually works well. Or if you have a new book by a favorite author coming out next week that you know you’ll devour and want to write about, there’s the Sept. 21 & 28 slots to fill. Brecht does the coordinating, you can send a message or just comment here. I’ll put a comment out for people to volunteer. It doesn’t have to be a book review, just any book-ish diary. We need more people to host these. We can’t all be superheroes like our beloved founder cfk who wrote and hosted these every Wednesday for years.
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