I just finished The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi, and, holy cow, folks—this story rocked.

It’s set in the future in the area around Washington D.C. which is the titular drowned cities. They’re drowned because the climate has gotten warmer, the seas have risen, and D.C. is half under water, permananetly flooded. It’s more like Georgia or Florida—gators, kudzu, the works. But this is not another dumb book about global warming. If it were, I wouldn’t be writing this.

No, the United States has fallen apart. Up north there’s some alliance with money and power and the ability to keep those in the Drowned Cities out. South, who knows? West? Don’t know. But right around D.C. everything has gone to hell.

It’s like Mogadishu, Somalia in the 1990’s (Blackhawk Down) with warlords fighting each other, tearing the place apart.

It’s like Sierra Leone at the end of that decade with different factions butchering locals and forcing kids to fight as soldiers.

Except instead of the U.S. or Europe or the U-freaking-N sending in peacekeepers to stabilize the situation, it’s China. And just like the U.S. in Somalia, the warlords send the Chinese peacekeepers packing. And so now it’s just chaos.

Talk about a setting for a story. But Bacigalupi doesn’t stop there. He adds in genetically modified creatures. He starts the book with one named Tool. A creature that’s got the DNA of humans, mastiffs, tigers, reptiles and who knows what else all combined to make him smarter and stronger than humans ever could be—a monster that’s the ultimate killer, the ultimate soldier, the ultimate war machine. One that was bred to submit to a master, but something went wrong with Tool. And he was able to break free of that bond.

Tool is trying to escape prison and death. But as mighty as he is, he’s weak and injured. And then two kids from a village run into him while in the jungle. He knows they’re going to reveal his whereabouts to the warlord searching for him. In his weakened state, Tool is only able to grab the small boy named Mouse.

Mahlia, the girl, promises to bring medicine if Tool will only spare the boy. He knows she’s lying.

And so starts a rich tale of the monster, the boy, and the girl: a tale that is filled with friendship, triumph, loss, heroism, cowardice, and earthy sci-fi coolness all set in the midst of a guerilla war. The beginning sucks you in. The ending leaves you breathless. Along the way you get to see into the character of all three plus some of the bad guys. In the end you get a story about sacrifice and love.

If you liked A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his time as a child solider in Africa; if you liked The Hunger Games, and not primarily for the romance; if you like person in jeopardy fiction or war flicks where a small group has to fight for its life, I think you will love this book.

This is the second book set in the same world. The first was Ship Breaker. Tool, one of the most interesting characters I’ve come across, is in that one too. But you don’t need to read that to enjoy this. And I wouldn’t put this read off to do so. Go give The Drowned Cities a try. Three or four pages in, I suspect you’ll be completely lost in the wondrous tale.

I’m supposed to do this tag thing where one author tells about his or her latest project and then tags other authors to tell about theirs and so on and so on until we turn into some weird internet author borg and eat your brains out. 

Heck with that.

I want to simply share something cool with you instead. James Maxey (who tagged me in the borg fest) writes stories with lots of action, fun, and character that also make you think. They always start with a bang and never let up. For example, look at how GREATSHADOW, his last book, starts.

When Infidel grabbed me by the seat of my pants and charged toward the window, I didn’t protest. Partly this was due to the speed of her action, but mostly due to my inebriation from the sacramental wine we’d stolen.

If an opening like that isn’t going to make you want to read more, I don’t know what will. Especially when the wine was stolen from a lava-pygmy temple carved into the sheer cliff face of a volcano.  I’m not alone in my appreciation of Maxey’s writing. Orson Card wrote this glowing review of GREATSHADOW earlier this year.

Here is the opening to Maxey’s “To The East, A Bright Star” which was published in Asimov’s.  It has one of my favorite beginnings.

There was a shark in the kitchen. The shark wasn’t huge, maybe four feet long, gliding across the linoleum toward the refrigerator. Tony stood motionless in the knee-deep water of the dining room. The Wolfman said that the only sharks that came in this far were bull sharks, which were highly aggressive. Tony leaned forward cautiously and shut the door to the kitchen. He’d known the exact time and date of his death for most of his adult life. With only hours to go, he wasn’t about to let the shark do something ironic.  

Which brings us to the fact that Maxey has another book out called WITCHBREAKER. That’s such a cool title I wish I could off Maxey and steal it for myself. The book has, as you have seen to the right, a fabulous cover as well. About 5000% better than the horrid thing Solaris put on GREATSHADOW.

Maxey talks about what inspired WITCHBREAKER in this blog post, which I recommend you read in full. But just in case you’re a lazy son-of-a-gun like me, here’s the meat of the thing. WITCHBREAKER is about a woman named Sorrow. Says Maxey:

Her father was a judge who hung his own mother after she was accused of being a witch. Sorrow rebelled by becoming a witch herself, but her hatred isn’t directed directly at her father, it’s directed at the religious and political institutions that empowered him. So, Sorrow’s life mission is to overthrow that system. She’s one woman against the world, fighting to make it a better place even though everyone she meets keeps insisting that the world isn’t so bad. I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for characters locked into a lifelong battle against forces more powerful than they will ever be.

Blast that dang Maxey and his character genius. I’m not envious at all. No, sir. Which is why I suggest you give Maxey a go. Maybe you’ll appreciate him as much as thousands of other readers do. Read the first few pages of WITCHBREAKER here with Amazon’s look inside.