Equations of Life
Jill McDole reviews the opening book of Simon Morden's trilogy Metrozone.
Author: Simon Morden
Publisher: Orbit Books
Availability: Out Now
Price: £7.99
Simon Morden begins his Metrozone trilogy with this first book, Equations of Life. The novel takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, unrecognisable from the one we know.
Samuil Petrovich’s main goal in life is survival. He made it through the nuclear fallout in St. Petersburg and now lives in London’s Metrozone. He has managed to survive by keeping his head down and attracting no attention. Stupidly, he ignores his own rule against personal involvement when he saves a woman from kidnapping. The young lady JUST HAPPENS to be the daughter of the most powerful criminal in London, who JUST HAPPENS to be working on creating an entire virtual city. The kidnappers JUST HAPPEN to be members of the Russian Mob, who JUST HAPPEN to want the girl’s father out of the way.
Meanwhile, Petrovich, a Russian student immigrant, and his colleague have nearly solved a mathematical equation called the Grand Unified Theory that holds the key to pretty much everything on the planet.
Petrovich finds himself in mortal danger from every side; even his own body is working against him. He has no idea who he can trust and who means him harm. He enlists the help of a teenage killer nun (no, really) and a bumbling cop with a nasty cough against yet another possible enemy-the new Machine Jihad (poor choice of words in my opinion, considering the world today).
Morden’s Petrovich is one of the quirkiest characters that I have come across. He’s a little weasel with a mysterious, nefarious past and a bad heart - literally. He accidentally does the right thing and pays for it dearly. The action is non-stop; poor Petrovich gets out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire on numerous occasions. We don’t learn a lot about Petrovich himself, although he mentions his ill deeds several times throughout the book. ALL the situations and characters are bizarre in their own rights.
The novel works for the most part. I am not a mathematical wizard by any means, but that part of the story is not SO complicated that it goes over my head. Parts of the book are quite graphically violent, but overall it was more than an adequate read, very good but… short of great. Plenty of mysteries are left to be solved in the next two books in the series, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom.
7/10
