The Black Wave

The Black Wave (Avery Cates) by Jeff Somers

It's hard to keep up with Avery Cates these days. Cates started as an up-and-coming gangster - a “gunner” in Somers' parlance - and then became the top gunner. All this was in the world of the globe-spanning “System.” Then, the System fell apart, everyone who mattered got “bricked,” and civilization totally collapsed to where the scattered remnants of humanity are fighting over the last remaining scraps of working System technology. Cates has grown into an old man with bad knees but the capacity to take a punch.

Cates' rise and fall is described over the course of around eight books. We are now about three books into the post-System world, which has been getting nastier and brutish.

In this book, Cates is leading a team to raid “Iron Island” for the last working hovercraft. The idea is that they can use the hovercraft to enter a secured facility and restart the System. Cates spent his life hating the System and does not have a favorable opinion of how this will work out, but it seems like the only move left.

The Cates series is very enjoyable action/adventure. The worldbuilding is gritty. However, the series works better when read from the beginning. At this point, there have been too many plot changes and characters to make sense of without following the storyline from the beginning.

This installment is about short story length. The story is not complete in itself. It is the first quarter of a complete novel. Still the story is satisfying and ends on a proper cliffhanger that motivated me to get the next installment.