Rapture

Kameron Hurley

Average Rating 6/10 (1 Review)

Nyx is back, alongside the bel dame sisterhood of assassins.

Although the centuries-long war is over, civil unrest is rife, and the fate of one kidnapped politician could be the catalyst for a bloody regime change.

With aliens in the sky and a hint of revolution in the air, Nyx and her team of mutant shape-shifters, torturers and bio-tech magicians have a new mission: save a life to save a country.

After years in exile, Nyxnissa so Dasheem is back in action in service to the bel dames, a sisterhood of elite government assassins tasked with eliminating deserters and traitors. The end of a centuries-long holy war between her country, Nasheen, and neighbouring Chenja has flooded the streets of Nasheen with unemployed - and unemployable - soldiers whose frustrations have brought the nation to the brink of civil war. Not everyone likes this tenuous and unpredictable "peace," however, and somebody has kidnapped a key politician whose death could trigger a bloody government takeover. With aliens in the sky and revolution on the ground, Nyx assembles a team of mad magicians, torturers, and mutant shape-shifters for an epic journey across a flesh-eating desert in search of a man she's not actually supposed to kill. Trouble is, killing is the only thing Nyx is good at. And she already left this man to die...

'Kameron Hurley is ferociously imaginative - with an emphasis on ferocious. She writes novels that are smart, dark, visceral and wonderfully, hectically entertaining.'

Review by Ben Macnair (310516) Rating (6/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Rating 6/10
In a dystopian future, the assassin Nyx is back, with a bang. Rapture is the third book in a series that follows Nyx, and the Bel Dame Sisterhood, a group of assassins, mercenaries for hire.

Hurley’s world building in this novel is extra-ordinary for the scope of her imagination, but also as a writer of strong, believable and sympathetic characters. She also knows how to write interaction, with character development being a vehicle for the plot, rather than the reverse. As well as this, Nyx also has to attend to civil unrest, and a doomed kidnapped politician could provide all kinds of trouble.

These are not just ordinary characters, though. We are not just dealing with people with moral dilemmas (about killing, etc.) the novel also has room for descriptions of mutant shape-shifters, torturers, and scientists that have found novel, and horrifying ways of using modern, and future technology.

As I have not read the first parts of the series, God’s War and Infidel, I have probably missed out on a lot of character development, but I don’t think that that detracts from the story telling in this book, which although it is more than 450 pages long, has enough pace, and storytelling prowess to just move the reader along from one inciting incident to the next. If you like Science Fiction, with a mixture of noirish characterisation, world’s that seem both fantastic, and believable, and strong characters that take no prisoners, then this could very well be one of the books for you.
Ben Macnair (31st May 2016)