‘Burning Skies’ – David J. Williams (Bantam Spectra)

One of my favourite things is picking up a book (with low expectations or no expectations at all) and then finding out it is absolutely brilliant. It doesn’t happen often and this makes those rare occurrences all the sweeter. You know what I mean, don’t you?
It was in May last year that I thought I’d give David Williams’ ‘Mirrored Heavens’ a go, despite the fact that it sounded like a thriller (which isn’t my thing at all!) When I enjoy a book, as much as I did ‘Mirrored Heavens’, then I’m always happy to have my expectations proved wrong. It wasn’t the smoothest of reads but it was still a book that I had a great time reading so when I was offered a chance to read the sequel, ‘Burning Skies’, I pretty much jumped at the chance!
Having finished the book this morning (it won the race with David Gunn’s ‘Day of the Damned’ over which book I finished first) I’ll quite happily say that David Williams has come up trumps again...

Not only are the terrorist group ‘Autumn Rain’ still very much in business (despite what happened at the end of the last book) but their plans are more far reaching than anyone could have possibly imagined. Bringing down the Net and assassinating the US President is only the start of it all...
As insurgency and counter insurgency flare up across the Earth-Moon system US counterintelligence agent Claire Haskell is caught up in the middle of it all; her extreme ‘Razor’ abilities coveted by both sides, Claire fights for the right cause but doesn’t trust certain of her comrades. She doesn’t trust herself either as even her memories have been proved to be false.
There is no time to act on this however as other agencies are bent on fulfilling their own agendas. Claire is about to find out that the real enemy is one step ahead of even her most ambitious plans...

Williams mentions, at the back of the book, that ‘Burning Rain’ has been designed to accommodate readers who missed ‘Mirrored Heavens’. While this is true you should really get yourself a copy of ‘Mirrored Heavens’ to read first; not only is it a great read in itself but there’s no way that the ‘catch up’ segments included in ‘Burning Skies’ can do real justice to the layers upon layers of paranoia and plot that precede (and continue) the latest book.

Reading ‘Mirrored Heavens’ first will also give you an idea of what to expect from Williams as a writer. Here’s a guy that has no problems with dropping you straight into the mind of a character who has no idea why he has woken up on a military spacecraft heading for an orbiting station (and still doesn’t when the bullets start flying!) This takes a while to get used to but it’s an excellent approach in terms of speeding up the pace with added urgency. When you have as much idea of what is going on as the operative, waiting for downloaded memories to kick in, then every bullet is that little more... intense...

Dealing with multiple characters (who are dealing with multiple conspiracies) necessitates a lot of switching viewpoints, often in the middle of full scale combat that will satisfy any fan of military sci-fi. Some of these scenes left me stunned by what Williams is prepared to throw into the fray! The point is though that the pacing and flow of the novel can suffer as a result. As soon as I got into what one character was up to then things shifted onto another. Sometimes the book flowed really well, in this regard, but at other times it felt like a real stop/start affair where I had to keep reminding myself who was who...

Despite this though, I found ‘Burning Skies’ to be a gripping read that has got me eager to see how it all concludes (especially given the way that the book ends, way to leave us all hanging!)
Williams has woven a web of conspiracies that it’s a pleasure to get stuck in and trace back to the source. Everything fits together perfectly but it’s a picture that you probably won’t realise was the one being put together (and that’s just the way I like it)...
As I’ve already mentioned, the combat scenes are intense and full of surprises where you least expect them. Future warfare doesn’t care if you’re dead or not, if you’re packing electronics then you can still fight... Williams has also done an admirable job of getting inside the heads of the combatants, putting them through paces worthy of their real life equivalents and having them react accordingly.
The focus is on the characters and this means that the detail of the background scenery can suffer. This is more than balanced out, however, by what goes on inside Claire’s head (as a Razor), this is cyber warfare on a whole new level and I’m interested to see how it plays out...

Despite a couple of small niggles, ‘Burning Skies’ was a superb read that has got me itching to see how it all ends in the final book. Great stuff, I want more!
Nine and a Quarter out of Ten