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The Burning Skies (Autumn Rain #2)

3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 · rating details · 88 ratings · 11 reviews

In his electrifying debut, The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams created a dark futuristic world grounded in the military rivalries, terror tactics, and political wrangling of our own time. Now he takes his masterful blend of military SF, espionage thriller, and dystopian cyberpunk one step further—to the edge of annihilation . . . .

Life as U.S. counterintelligence agent...more

Paperback, 416 pages

Published May 19th 2009 by Spectra (first published May 9th 2009)

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Jul 24, 2010 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

So in this second book of David’s series, we’re back to the action in the 22nd century pretty much where we left things at the end of The Mirrored Heavens. The Autumn Rain group have destroyed the Earth’s Phoenix Space Elevator and much of what was there at the beginning.

In this second book, things happen mainly off planet. Despite the actions in The Mirrored Heavens, the terrorist group Autumn Rain have not been defeated. In an attempt to create peace between different Earth factions, a top sec...more So in this second book of David’s series, we’re back to the action in the 22nd century pretty much where we left things at the end of The Mirrored Heavens. The Autumn Rain group have destroyed the Earth’s Phoenix Space Elevator and much of what was there at the beginning.

In this second book, things happen mainly off planet. Despite the actions in The Mirrored Heavens, the terrorist group Autumn Rain have not been defeated. In an attempt to create peace between different Earth factions, a top secret meeting between the US President and the Eurasian Coalition has been arranged on the Europa platform, two O Neill space stations built into an asteroid at L5.

However, as you might expect, the situation soon deteriorates rapidly as we end up with Europa being compromised, surrounded by spaceships at standoff positions and an attack by Rain commandos with plans to assassinate US President Andrew Harrison being initiated as part of the Autumn Rain plot, to destroy Earth alliances and dominate humanity.

To this we have the book written as before in short burst chapters from a number of perspectives, the main characters in the book. Returning are Claire Haskell, US counterintelligence agent (Razor), now on the run after the events of The Mirrored Heavens; Stefan Lynx and Leo Saramax, two other Razor operatives met previously, Strom Carson, Razor leader and member of the elite Praetorian triad and Lyle Spencer, undercover operative.

The narrative moves quickly and at times blindingly fast between these characters. Those who have read the previous novel will be aware of this – others may find that takes a little bit of getting used to. At times, this can lead to characters being a tad interchangeable if you’re not careful, though there are helpful hints along the way, such as the main characters each being given a symbol to show from which perspective the narrative is coming from.

Haskell is soon given protection by the command of The Throne (Harrison) and is put under the protection of Gunnar Huselid (The Hand), the Commander of the Praetorian Guard. Her ability to hack into Autumn Rain’s cyber-network makes her a valuable asset in the fight against terrorism and may just give the superpowers the edge in the battle. The scenes where Haskell is protected and moved to safety whilst Europa is under attack are brilliant, everything Star Wars stormtroopers should be.

However things are not perhaps as clear as they at first seem to be.

What we have here is David’s style of fast-paced action and complex political machinations. There are intricate power plays and struggles for power as things reassert themselves, crossed and counter-crossed agents where no one trusts anyone else and the differentiation between right and wrong is deliberately blurred.

Such actions and style are quite filmic. In places the rather expletive-heavy dialogue reads as if it were part of a script rather than a novel. Like the fast-cut style of 21st century TV, the book assaults the reader from different perspectives throughout. You do have to follow things closely, especially when events are moving very quickly. This is not a book to skim through! Less focussed readers may find they have to backtrack at times, though the plotting and the consequences of such manoeuvrings are quite ingenious.

Likewise, the ending of the novel is brilliant – like the ending of 24 but in an SF setting, and leaves the reader wanting to know how things will change next. I’m not going to spoil it here, but it is pretty awesome.

Which is a good thing, especially as the next book in the series - Machinery of Light – is now available.

If you want to read complex, fast-paced SF, where the next plot-event is never obvious, then this is a book for you.(less)

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Jun 26, 2009 Al Billings rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is Williams' follow-up to his first novel, The Mirrored Heavens . Together, they form the first two parts of a trilogy but can be read alone (though I wouldn't recommend doing so).

The Burning Skies (TBS) picks up four days after the end of The Mirrored Heavens (TMH). The setting for the novels is a century from now, 2110, in a world divided in a cold war between two superpowers, the Americans (the good ol' USA) and the Eurasions, which are a joint power of the Chinese and the Russians (join...more This is Williams' follow-up to his first novel, The Mirrored Heavens . Together, they form the first two parts of a trilogy but can be read alone (though I wouldn't recommend doing so).

The Burning Skies (TBS) picks up four days after the end of The Mirrored Heavens (TMH). The setting for the novels is a century from now, 2110, in a world divided in a cold war between two superpowers, the Americans (the good ol' USA) and the Eurasions, which are a joint power of the Chinese and the Russians (joined in loathing self-protection). TMH focused on an attack on the space elevator, a "beanstalk," jointly built by the superpowers by a terrorist organization known as the Autumn Rain. (As an aside, Williams mentions that he started writing the first novel well before 9/11.) TBS deals with the aftereffects of that attack, focusing on a summit between the powers at a neutral (and huge) space platform in orbit and the attempts by the Autumn Rain to disrupt this summit and kill the leaders of the superpowers.

The pace of the novel is staggering. "Frenetic" is the word that I use to describe it and this applied to the first novel as well so I expect it will be a feature of the entire trilogy. The action is non-stop and Williams increases the subjective speed by using no chapters and telling the story entirely in the first person. We only know what they know, as they discover it through their trials and attempts to survive the chaos. The world of TBS is one of orbital directed energy weapons that work at the speed of light. If a weapon has line of site on you (or your cities), it can instantly destroy what it sees. Think of mutual assured destruction cubed with a high tech and nearly invisible Al-Qaeda thrown into the mix trying to disrupt things. The characters are all either soldiers, intelligence operatives, or other down and dirty sorts working for the military, which has effectively taken over the United States in a perpetual paranoid military situation. As one of the characters comments, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand was doing last week and things are so compartmentalized and factionalized within this military apparatus that double-agents, plans within plans, and schemes to take control, either directly in a coup or indirectly through leaping atop the chaos, are the constant order of the day. To add to this, the characters live in a world where memories can be erased, altered, or added and people can be conditioned with preset commands. It isn't uncommon for characters to be on a mission where the ends are not known to them but appear as memories in their minds as the mission progresses. It is all very paranoia inducing and stressful and each of the characters reflects that.

The characters generally fall into two official types, those of "mechs" and "razors." Mechs are the hardcore soldiers. They fight in mechanized and powered armor covered in weaponry and meshed to other mechs or their razors. Razors are normally paired with mechs in the field and are something like Gibson's console cowboys crossed with an intelligence agent. They hack the systems and acquire the data to give their mechs a chance to survive the environment in which they find themselves.

Beyond this, I'm not going to get into the overall plot of the book as it would be fairly hard to do and avoid spoilers.

It was a very quick read and I quite enjoyed the book. There are twists upon twists as things progress at lightning speed within it. The only difficulty I really had with the book is that there are a lot of viewpoint characters. There three primary ones but a number of secondaries as well. With the changes back and forth, especially when the plot points are divergent, it can get a little complex to tell who was where and, wait, is this person a mech or a razor or whose side are they on? If I'd read TBS right after TMH, I would have had less difficulty but it had been a year, at least, and it took a while for me to reassemble some of the character backgrounds. While the book stands alone, reading them together (and in order) would really enhance the experience.

I am very much looking forward to reading the third book when it comes out. Williams has recently submitted the manuscript to his publisher, so I expect it in a year or so. If you wish to see what he's up to in the meantime, he has a site for the books at autumnrain2110.com and he maintains a blog there as well.(less)

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Jun 27, 2009 Raja rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, fiction

This is runaway bullet train that never so much as slows down along the way. I'm enjoying this series more, but I'm still somewhat frustrated by the plot twists that come out of nowhere with zero foreshadowing. Now, I have the added frustration of not understanding why certain characters made the choices they did, because somehow despite them being significant POV characters, we're given almost no insight into their motivations. Since the book doesn't even pause at the end, let alone conclude, I...more

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Jul 29, 2010 Seak (Bryce L.) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, sci-fi, arc-review

Seak's Intro -
This combined review has been in the works for some time now, actually since before EdifanoB started his own blog, Edi's Book Lighthouse, so without further ado, here's Edi's intro:

Edi's Intro -
This is nothing new under the sun. Two guys decide to write a combined review. This is something new ..... for us. It is our debut. For the first time ever Seak and ediFanoB went into a huddle – virtually. Mails made it possible.
Enough chitchat! Before we go into details we proudly present...more

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Dec 02, 2009 Joshua Palmatier rated it 4 of 5 stars

Everything in this book--the length of the scenes, the quick jumps from character to character, the way the scenes are structured--is designed to make the book MOVE! And that's the sense you get from the very first page. The pace is fast, with multiple plot threads to follow through multiple characters, all woven together and meshing by the end. In fact, the entire first two-thirds of the book is really one long scene, with every twist and turn you could think of (and some you didn't) coming int...more Everything in this book--the length of the scenes, the quick jumps from character to character, the way the scenes are structured--is designed to make the book MOVE! And that's the sense you get from the very first page. The pace is fast, with multiple plot threads to follow through multiple characters, all woven together and meshing by the end. In fact, the entire first two-thirds of the book is really one long scene, with every twist and turn you could think of (and some you didn't) coming into play.

The Burning Skies is the sequel to The Mirrored Heavens and pretty much picks up four days after the events in the first book. I'd suggest you read the first book before diving into this one, or the action won't make a whole lot of sense. The terrorist group Autumn Rain continues to harass the world, this time on the Europa Platform, a neutral territory that contains New Zurich and New London . . . along with a safe house for the U.S. President. And that's the target: the President. And who is loyal and who isn't as the fighting escalates is what drives most of the tension throughout the novel.

And this is also the book's major drawback: the question as to who is doing what for what reason and why makes it nearly impossible to know who's "good" and who's "bad." I didn't know who to root for, and the twists and turns became so convoluted that I ended up simply sitting back and not trying to figure out who was doing what to whom. Part of the problem was that the twists and turns were so numerous, but another part of the problem was how David J. Williams kept the motivations, etc, hidden by having oblique references to what was really going on at the end of a scene before jumping to another POV character. This has the effect of increasing the tension . . . but also the confusion because there is never a straightforward answer to all of the many questions. And when it's used too much, it can get annoying.

So, in the end, it was an enjoyable ride, but it would have been MORE enjoyable if I'd known who to root for and had been able to follow all of the twists and turns. Will I buy the third book (titled The Machinery of Light I believe, coming in May 2010)? Yes. I'm definitely intrigued by the story, the world that David has created, and the outcome of all of the twists and turns. There's some spectacular worldbuilding here, and some interesting characters.(less)

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Nov 02, 2009 Mark Ames rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Okay, this is non-stop action. Talk about an action film waiting to happen, I say that not in a bad way. Well anyway solid action adventure stuff that builds on the first novel, Mirrored Heavens. In fact it is set four days after that novel which leads to my only complaint. I'm having a hard time understanding time in this novel. Things seem to happen much to quickly in terms of travel and preparation of characters for their actions. A quibble I admit and one that I overlook because if you like...more

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Jun 14, 2013 Joe rated it 3 of 5 stars

The pace of action William's is able to maintain is impressive and a lot of fun. It sort of stutter steps when the plot gets twisty, but when this thing is barreling towards a target its a roaring good time. Book three, here I come!

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May 03, 2012 Jamie McFarlane rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found the beginning of the book quite hard to get into, it's been a few years since I read Mirrored Heavens so the characters and ending of that book weren't clear in my mind. The back of the book says you can read this without having read MH but I wouldn't recommend it. And if you read MH I would read this right after so it's fresh in your mind. That's being said once I remembered who was who and the action started to flesh out a bit more I thoroughly enjoyed this book, will be heading out to...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Gatzby rated it 2 of 5 stars

Not sure I actually finished this, but it just got pretty tedious. The action is punctuated by long, drawn out repetition. It more or less diminished any enjoyment I got from the first book. Probably skip it.

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Dec 06, 2011 Jason Kelley rated it 3 of 5 stars

The entire first half of the book is one continuous action sequence.
Awesome.

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May 22, 2010 edifanob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-books, 2010-reads

Nearly non stop action. Sometimes confusing.

Full review in progress

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Shelves: w-books, kindle

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Shelves: si-fi

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Shelves: sf

May 11, 2013 Kevin Comstock rated it 3 of 5 stars

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Shelves: epic, fiction, sci-fi

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About David J. Williams

Descended from Australian convicts, David J. Williams nonetheless managed to be born in Hertfordshire, England, and subsequently moved to Washington D.C. just in time for Nixon’s impeachment. Graduating from Yale with a degree in history some time later, he narrowly escaped the life of a graduate student and ended up doing time in Corporate America, which drove him so crazy he started moonlighting...more

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The Burning Skies (Autumn Rain #2)

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