Sisters of No Mercy

by Robert Van Dusen

Mega-storm Martha has wreaked havoc and it's harder than ever to find a home. Hapless Pinky, Del - mother-hen and mentor - and the ever-resourceful and sometimes sleuth Almond are members of the Sisters of No Mercy. A band of vigilantes, a pack of thieves or a new wave commune, this underground network has a fresh heir to a mining fortune and property mogul Dirk Trench. Can these underdogs take on the establishment and win?

327 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Alistair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Silk’s novel is set in an un-named city in the wake of Martha, a freakish storm in this post-climate change environment that has left large parts of the city uninhabitable. The city is divided into districts, then quarters, and more pertinently, into the haves and have-nots. The Sisters of No Mercy are a group of individuals dedicated to re-distributing some of the avaricious gains made by a few that have benefited from the effects of Martha. One of the principal ways of assisting those with little, is to locate housing, and it’s through the character of Pinky that this is kept front and centre. Pinky is engagingly inept in most facets of life with an almost insatiable need to belong, and it’s Pinky that provides the net to capture other characters in the book. There’s a tribal element to the Sisters: few appear to have family. Silk has wisely kept his cast small in number, and eschewed providing back stories for his characters. The narrative slowly builds to a climax that is a satisfying end to the novel. Silk writes with assurance that belies his status as a first-time novelist.

[Tess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've rated Sisters of No Mercy highly because though it's by no means perfect, it was enjoyable, avoided many pitfalls of the near-future dystopian setting (over-explaining the world, characters knowing everything about every technology, etc), and is a very impressive first novel from a young author. I did wish some of the descriptive language focused more on the characters than the minutiae of what they were doing . There was enough for the chracters' motivations to make sense, but since they were mostly very likeable and I kept finding myself wanting to know more about them.