Jaym Gates Reviews Mind Storm
Mind Storm
K.M. Ruiz
Thomas Dunne Books (304 pp, $24.99, Hardcover May 2011)
Reviewed by Jaym Gates
Science fiction is inundated with post-apocalyptic and dystopian settings, super-powers and corrupt governments, with varied results. Mind Storm is a nice blend of the familiar and the new, packed with action, and it introduces some pretty fun new characters. It is the first book of a series of unspecified length.
Mind Storm opens with psions Threnody and Quenton traveling to the slums of Los Angeles. It is the year 2379. Humans have stripped the Earth of nearly all resources. Crowded and afraid, nuclear war was unleashed…everywhere. By the time the war was over, most of the populated areas were dead zones, unfit for human life. The majority of the human race had been wiped out. But a small percentage of the human population finds their DNA altered, leaving them incredibly powerful and unique. They are called psions, and brainwashed and put in service to the world government as soldier-slaves.
Their power comes at a cost, burning out more of their bodies with every use. Only the fortunate make it to the age of thirty five. They are feared and hated by the humans, who regard them as dangerous vermin. Most of them are found early and pulled into the Stryker Syndicate, fitted with kill-switches controlled by the World Court. The ones who escape the Strykers are found and enslaved by the Warhounds, a rogue group of powerful psions serving a shadowy figure.