Starfish, the premier novel from Canadian author Peter Watts, immersed readers in a dark and forbidding, yet somehow beautiful world in the abyssal depths of ocean. Its sequel, Maelstrom, evolves this foreboding future and marches it triumphantly out of the sea.
As the second installment of the Rifters Trilogy, Maelstrom picks up where Starfish left off. Lenie Clarke, once a rape victim turned die hard leader, takes a new name: the Meltdown Madonna. Climbing ashore onto a beach littered with the death and ruin of a nuclear tsunami, she is alone. Her "friends," amphibious Rifters like herself, are dead; destroyed in the same blast that now heralds her arrival on land.
Furious at the entire world, and haunted by memories not her own, Lenie begins a trek across North America in a quest to discover who pulled the trigger and why, or perhaps a quest to finally confront her abusive father. Unknowingly, or perhaps uncaringly, she leaves behind her a trail of disease and fire: Lenie Clarke is Vector 0 of a deadly microbe known simply as ßehemoth, and she poses a threat to all of humanity. To the Corporate "masters" who once tried to prevent its escape from the depths with a nuclear strike, only one of two conclusions to this odyssey will occur.
The death of the world, or the death of Lenie Clarke - and Lenie has a head-start.
From the refugee camps of the Pacific Coast, to the quarantine zones of the Dust Belt, to the waters of Lake Michigan, Lenie is pursued relentlessly. Aided by a conscious internet and countless souls seeking leadership and purpose, Clarke is up against an army led by Achilles Desjardins, a slave to "the greater good," and even an old "friend" will give chase to stop this "avenging angel."
While this novel may be slightly more confusing and a slower read for many then Starfish, due to the change from an aquatic world to one of technological chaos, Maelstrom is certainly not lacking in action.
Anyone who enjoys a hopeless future and a good read should definitely pick up this novel along with its prequel.
Like all of Watts' novels,
Maelstrom can also be read for free on his site.
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