Post-apocalyptic novels can be fun, but the subset of speculative fiction is a fairly popular setting. So when an interesting hook is thrown into the mix, well…the story can be that much more fun. Kit Rocha’s (the writing pair of Donna Herren and Bree Bridges) Mercenary Librarians series, which launches with Deal with the Devil definitely has that interesting premise – librarians are basically heroes and need to get lost files from the Library of Congress.
Nina is an information broker with a mission—she and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to save the hopeless in a crumbling America.
Knox is the bitter, battle-weary captain of the Silver Devils. His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he’s fighting to survive.
They’re on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process…
Or they could do the impossible: team up.
This is the first book in a near-future science fiction series with elements of romance.
The world is quite barren, having been decimated by solar flares and global conflicts over energy. Nina and her Mercenary Librarians are information brokers, in this future information is one of the most important commodities and Nina and her crew are combat ready. She is approached by a man named Garrett Knox, whose team of soldiers known as the Silver Devils broke away from their overly ruthless, murderous employers. They’ve come to ask Nina if she and her crew will help them recover the electronic archives of the Library of Congress. Unfortunately (or fortunately for the plot of the novel), the archives are scattered in various locals across the broken United States.
There is a romance between Knox and Nina that goes from hot to cold through much of the novel and provided tension in the narrative. Rocha does a pretty solid job of putting the reader in both of their heads throughout their interactions and when they are separated. I felt empathy for both of their situations, this was probably the strongest element of the novel.
However, despite the interesting setting and fairly well realized romantic pair, I had difficulty connecting with the bulk of the novel. The characters who aren’t Knox and Nina felt fairly indistinguishable and weren’t entirely likeable. I didn’t hate them, but they really were pure background. Outside of the romantic tension, the bulk of the plot, especially the middle third of the novel, I found it difficult keeping my attention on the novel. There were twists a-plenty along the way, but the overall pacing and plot just felt very threadbare. One of the twists felt a little hollow especially how some of its repercussions played out.
In the end, this may be a case of it is me not you with the book. There are some really strong elements that will appeal to many readers, on the surface they appealed to me. The Rocha duo does really solid work on the protagonists, there are flashes of palpable narrative tension and one of the strengths is the milieu. Post-apocalyptic fiction is prevalent, most scenarios involve a combination of some kind of plague, zombies, alien invasion, and/or nuclear war. I’ve read a pretty wide-swath of post-apocalyptic fiction and I can maybe count one finger that have a collapse of civilization quite the way the Rocha duo does. It drew me in and I wanted to know more about it.
But, as I said, other elements of the novel weren’t on the same level of “drawing me in” as the setting. Rocha is a pretty popular author tandem, so I suspect this novel will please those readers and do well in general. For me; however, I wouldn’t qualify it as an optimal writer-reader connection.
© 2020 Rob H. Bedford
May 2020 | Tor Books
Hardcover | 336 pages
https://www.kitrocha.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
