Roc, 384 pages
February 2012
Mass Market Paperback, 978-0-451-41340-6
http://jameskdecker.com/
Sample Chapter: http://jameskdecker.com/burnZoneExcerpt.html
Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) provided by Publisher
Sam Shao is a surrogate mother to an alien child; as part of a program with the haan, humans have been helping to raise haan babies ever since their space ship crash landed approximately 50 years ago. The haan are physically similar to humans, though the clear skin and fragile bones do set them apart, as does their eyes and appetite. Sam’s life is upended when her adoptive father Dragan is seized by authorities for conspiring against the government. Sam is, of course, unwilling to believe this of her guardian and even less willing to believe, as the news vids report, that he is a cannibal and worse. Sam relinquishes the infant haan to which she bonded, struggling with the decision and making an impression with the makeshift adoption agency. Sam connects with one of her friends, Vamp, tries to touch base with people she thought were allies of her father and eventually a haan soldier by the name of Nix finds her and the trio pursues her adoptive father and to find out the truth behind his abduction. Along the way, she learns a great deal more about the truth of the haan than she expected.
Though The Burn Zone is the first novel to be published under the James K. Decker byline, the author published the Revivors trilogy under the name James Knapp, a zombie-noir series which began with the novel State of Decay. I read and enjoyed that novel and see some of the same sensibilities here in The Burn Zone. A non-stop narrative pace kept the plot moving, the pages turning, and this reader guessing which fork in the road the story would take. The noir-ish and gritty feel of The Burn Zone evokes a similar used, grimy, and dirty future as did State of Decay; there’s a clear inspiration from Blade Runner in Decker’s writing.
As strong as the plotting and narrative pull are in The Burn Zone, I think Decker’s greatest strength is the character of Sam. She is a fully empathetic character throughout most of the novel, the choices she made informed by the knowledge she possessed were completely believable. At times her determination and strength don’t waiver, and in the small instances they do waiver, it helps to round out her character as a fully realized human being.
Like many people, she doesn’t know what she had until it was lost. For example, Dragan was her de-facto father, but she often considered him just a guardian. Only when she begins searching for him and sees and hears the lies being broadcast about him does she come to think of him as a father. Likewise, she thought of raising haan babies as something of a burden, but she finds it very difficult to let go in the beginning of the novel and only after the fact does she realize what a rewarding experience it was for her.
The other characters, primarily her allies Nix the haan soldier and Vamp, are more than just set dressing and tools to get Sam what she desires in this thrill-ride of a quest. Vamp has feelings as does Nix, perhaps one of the stronger scenes featuring both characters is a scene Sam only overhears – a discussion between Nix and Vamp about Sam. I often don’t care for scenes of first person protagonist’s ‘overhearing’ other conversations because it can feel a contrived way to relay information but here it was effective and used just in the right way.
The novel takes place in the fictional city of Hangfei, which Decker set in a future analogue of China, based on some of the locations and character names. Smartly, he doesn’t specify the nation is China. As the novel progresses and Sam learns more about the haan and their relationship to our world since their ship crashed nearly fifty years ago, the full scope of the aliens effect on Earth becomes much more far ranging than either Sam or this reader could have expected.
James K. Decker’s The Burn Zone is a thought-provoking thrill ride that evokes themes touched upon by the novels Octavia Butler and films like District 9 and Minority Report, and Dark City. The Burn Zone surprised me with its depth and Decker’s ability to tell an intimate story of a girl searching for her father with a more grand backdrop and potential to take a larger series to many different places.
This is a science fiction novel all readers of the genre should read and one that has the strengths to bridge the gap to non-SF readers.
An early contender for one of the top SF novels of 2013, Highly Recommended.
© 2013 Rob H. Bedford
