Blood in the Water by Eric Del Carlo

[reviews_and_ramblings]

This is the classic apocalyptic futuristic tale. In the previous book, Nickerson, an enhanced paid assassin for the government, was sold for an illegal hunt from his employers; Nickerson is more than forty years old and for the legal government he is too old to do the job, and so, since he has feline genes in him, he is the right target for an illegal hunt. Only that Nickerson was not of the idea to willing go to death, and with the help of a streetmuscler, BalqJaq, a young con who lived in the underneath city, he fough against his old alleys and won.

The story is set in a three way world: there are the underneath cities, almost an hell where people try to survive, there is the superficial terrain, a wild zone abandoned by human beings, and there are the space colonies, the civil and "legal" new world. The last book dealt with Nickerson and BlaqJaq's adventures in the underneath world; this one is the tale of their experiences in the superficial world... I have the impression that the next one will be set in the new space world.

Nickerson and BlaqJaq are at the opposite. Nickerson is older, wiser and more experienced, while BlaqJaq is younger, impulsive and a bit naivee, even if he has seen more thing a boy of twenty should see. On the other hand, BlaqJaq is stronger, with a very impressive body, while Nickerson has the grace of the felines of whom the genetic is in his body. Those counterbalanced elements make them a complete couple: no one of them is the master or the slave, no one is the boss or the boy; they have their own duties, Nickerson put the experience, BlaqJaq the refreshing thirst of life, something that Nickerson thought to have lost.

There is sex in this tale, but it's not the main event of the story, it's almost a pass by event, something that is good, but not something that you absolutely need to enjoy the story.

Again the story is not too long, less than 120 pages, and again it has an open ending, to make you want to read the next book in the series.

http://www.loose-id.net/detail.aspx?ID=763

Series:
1) Steel Sleet: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/206359.html
2) Blood in the Water

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading+list&view=elisa.rolle


Cover Art by Anne Cain