A Man Disrupted, by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

Fresh off the presses from the Hinterlands division at Marcher Lord Press is A Man Disrupted, the first offering from the team of Steve Rzasa and Vox Day.  Besides both having cool names, they are both accomplished sci-fi writers.  Rzasa's pair of novels The Word Reclaimed and The Word Unleashed are favorites, definitely on my "I'll read this again" list.  Day has written some strong fantasy works, including the epic A Throne of Bones.  In A Man Disrupted, I am not sure where one voice ended and the other began.  They make a great team.

Set several hundred years in the future, on the planet Rhysalan, A Man Disrupted starts off with a murder.  A prince has been disrupted (disintegrated) in a part of town princes typically avoid.  As an investigator for the military police, Graven Tower wouldn't normally respond on the scene, but when he catches wind that Detector Hildreth, the pretty blond policewoman whom he has a crush on, is on her way, he decides he might offer his assistance.  So begins a tale of court intrigue, big explosions, fast (and destructive) chase scenes, and an investigative team that won't be let themselves be stopped.

 The blurb on the back cover describes this as "action-packed Mil-SF mystery," which covers the book very well.  The action: non-stop.  Military: you learn every thing about Tower's arsenal short of the weapons manual.  SF: Rzasa and Day have created a complex future history, giving the astro-political and scientific background without overwhelming the reader with history or technology.  Mystery: all of the above is the backdrop against which they tell a compelling mystery story, a political assassination with implications for the stability of the planet (Rhysalan as well as others).

As I mentioned, A Man Disrupted is on the MLP's Hinterland books.  Readers of other Marcher Lord Press books will be aware the the Hinterlands division was created for their books that are a bit, shall we say, rougher around the edges than their main MLP works.  As they say on the web site,

 Hinterlands books may contain vulgarity, profanity, nudity, and/or sexual content, but never for gratuitous purposes. Hinterlands . . . allows us to examine mature themes in a realistic manner that some Christians will appreciate. We know that not everyone will want to read these books, so we have set them apart into the Hinterlands imprint. 

Readers of mainstream sci-fi, or really any secular fiction, or viewers of PG-13 or even PG movies will not be shocked by what they read here.  The few profanities that are used are used sparingly, in a way that makes them much more effective than the constant streams of expletives we might hear or read in modern literature or movies.

Finally, the spiritual theme of A Man Disrupted is thin but interesting nonetheless.  Tower has an augment named Baby, sort of like Apple's Siri, only it's in his head and always on.  She has a high level of self-awareness, and contemplates her own mortality (as well as Tower's).  Rzasa and Day don't develop this side of Baby much, but I have a feeling that in future books, Baby and Tower will delve into some deeper theological waters.