Author: Anthony Vicino
Genre: SF
Price: $3.99 (ebook) $10.73
(paperback)
Publisher: One Lazy Robot
ISBN: 978-0692336991
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib
Anthony Vicino, the author of Time Heist,
contacted me directly via email with what proved to be a compelling pitch to review
his first novel. I agreed, and was
pleased with my decision.
Time Heist starts out as a futuristic
hard-boiled mystery. Our first-person
narrator, Tom Mandel, is an ex-cop with less than a day to live. He knows this because everybody is implanted
with a Life Tracker. This device counts
down your allocated 70 years of life, and when it hits zero, it kills you. Although Mandel has been abusing drugs for
the past nine years since his wife was killed, nanotech means he’s fairly
healthy.
Also,
Mandel is an “Intuit” – somebody who can intuitively navigate the all-pervasive
cyberspace. As I mentioned, the story
starts out as a hard-boiled noir, with tired and world-weary detective doing
one last job for the good guys. Perhaps
fortunately, Mandel’s last assignment, to find Malcom Wolfe, escaped prisoner
and killer of Mandel’s wife, proves to be much more high-stakes, involving no
less than the fate of all humanity.
Alas, I found the story curiously slow to get
started. Don’t get me wrong – there’s a
lot of action from Chapter 2 thru to the end.
But for the longest time we don’t find out what’s at stake. Malcom Wolfe, for example, killed nine million people! He did this by hacking their Life Trackers,
taking them instantly to ten minutes left.
Yet we don’t find this out until a good halfway into the book. The world in general is so radically
different as to leave me in doubt as to whether or not it was Earth, but again,
that detail isn't provided until quite late in the book.
The other thing I found problematic was the
action. I felt like I was in a
first-person-shooter video game. Mandel
and other named characters shot their way through guards and police like they
were shooting zombies. The named
characters did get hurt and complained of pain, but thanks to nanotech they
were literally up and running in no time.
The entire novel takes place in just over 24 hours.
Having said all of that, I found Time Heist an
interesting and enjoyable read. Vicino’s
writing is gripping, and his characters are sympathetic. Although I would have handled some things
differently, Time Heist was a good read.
8/10
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