Simon Vector, by JAK Holding
Mike Resnick, the five-time Hugo award winner, hinted at Simon Vector’s pulp roots when he wrote, “Prison planets, evil geniuses, nameless horrors, and a plucky female protagonist — what more could any grown-up boy ask for?” Ian Douglas, the popular military scifi writer, offered more insight; he called the book “darker and more violent than Aliens, as gritty and as noire as Bladerunner, and spiced with the blood and graphic gore of the zombie apocalypse.” Jonathan Mayberry said it was “highly recommended,” calling the eponymous character “a dark hero for even darker times.”
All of these descriptions are apt. Envisioned as a dark Flash Gordon, with horror overtones and the subtext of a procedural actioner, Simon Vector is many novels at once — thriller, survival horror, and adventure tale. While it’s difficult to be many things to many people, this book manages it, provided you’re not averse to violence or easily disgusted by monsters. The monsters of Simon Vector, confined and then run amok in the prison Alpha Draconis, run the gamut from human to alien… and something queasy in between.
In some ways it reads like one of Steve Perry’s “Aliens” or S.D. Perry’s “Resident Evil” novelizations; the plot could easily be that of a survival-horror video game. In other ways, Simon Vector reads like pulp, clearly influenced by any of several action and military scifi authors. This is not, however, a superficial book. There is real depth here, and the “Entrypoint” novellas announced by League Entertainment promise to offer even more insight into the lives of some of the lesser characters. Simon Vector is a novel that BEGS to be the first of a series. It is ruthless, it is fast-paced, and it is frank in its depictions of an ugly world.
If there is a lingering question in the readers’ mind at the end of this novel, it is a question the author(s) MEAN for you to ask: What IS Simon Vector? The book hints at darker deeds to come, leaves the reader wanting more, and is one hell of a menacing, battery-operated tram ride from breakneck start to self-destruct-countdown finish.
