The Digital Plague is the third Avery Cates novel by Jeff Somers.
Avery Cates once small time criminal and assassin has climbed from the grim underbelly of a society ruled by a violent police force in the pay of a techno freak government., to an exulted positions as ‘king’ of his own little shit heap. Somers presents Cates as an antihero, unlovely, amoral and yet somehow with a code of honour making him a freedom fighter of the underclass, or some kind of dark James Bond figure. There is also a wider story arc about the dissolution of society with the police and government turning against one and another and the emergence of something even worse from the chaos surrounding this.
A good novel always raises questions in the mind of its reader. The most obvious question raised by sci-fi tends to be, could this be true, is this our future?
The question The Digital Plague raised for me was "why oh why am I reading this crap?" Somers clearly has a great imagination he has created a complex and believable society but his technical ability to translate those ideas into good storytelling is severely lacking. I once, out of the kind of curiosity known for killing cats read a book by Dan Brown. Somers and Brown share similar traits, the short snappy chapters, dialogue to make your teeth hurt, and a ridiculous attitude to pacing which demands a cliff hanger at the end of every chapter however contrived.
If you liked Dan Brown’s novels this is the book for you. If you prefer something coherent and in the slightest bit engaging, please be warned this is not it.
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It was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down. (1963) ~ Agatha Christie ~
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