Seconds To Midnight - David Orson Newton

 

Taut thriller set in 2029 on the brink of World War 3

Orson Newton's thriller is a page turner in every sense of the word. A brisk unputdownable read with short chapters and a very of the moment narrative.

The year is 2029, Europe is teetering on the brink of war - conscription has been launched in the UK, a storm is coming but from many angles. As the Doomsday clock ticks down, the proximity to catastrophic global disaster is very much on the horizon as the seconds wind down.

The best science fiction always maintains an element of believability and fact - the worry of nuclear holocaust is something that many people have been living with for much of their adult lives (for this reader post-Chernobyl the threat is clear) yet for my parents the Cuban Missile Crisis of twenty plus years earlier was the first alarm.

In this book, British Intelligence launches Operation Iris and Artemis (concurrent timeframe with new Space shuttle programme to the moon), yet the blurring of human instinct and machine intention blur boundaries. At the heart of the operation is Omnia - an artificial superintelligence so advanced it does not answer to its creators.

The fear of AI and how it is slowly seeping into our everyday lives with many of us either submitting or combatting helps with the understanding of the novel's motives. While the machine may have the answers, the humans are the ones who will be held responsible.

Characters are detailed but do not last long in the memory, the most memorable being the mother and her missing/awol soldier son, her interaction with him over a megaphone and her asking him to come out of hiding does stay with you.

However, most characters are conduits for the ultimate message of what is at stake for humanity in the years to come. 

This prescient novel with its real world comments is good read, short bursts of action throughout maintain attention. The tone and message reminded me of the Gold trilogy by David Barker, another novelist that touched upon the next war being about water and the need to inhabit the moon for new resources.

A fascinating and ultimately frightening read, the short sharp chapters reads like a constant warning of what lies ahead for us if we do not change things.

My thanks to Midas PR for the review opportunity and being a part of the blog tour

Seconds to Midnight is released by Chiselbury on April 23rd.