Blazing Reader,

Imagine a man pulling out his smartphone, turning on a vacuum cleaner or starting his car... and a laser beam (from outer space) immediately vaporizes his device/appliance/vehicle (along with him).

Well, that's more or less what the people of Hesperides face in J. Kenton Pierce's novel, A Kiss for Damocles — one of the five finalists for this year's Prometheus Award for Best Novel. (For those who don't know: The Prometheus Awards go out to works of science fiction and fantasy with a pro-freedom backbone.)

Pierce's A Kiss for Damocles is set on a planet technologically oppressed by an orbital AI security system called Damocles, programmed to vaporize any electronics. This leaves people on the surface relying on steam engines, Zeppelin-like airships, and horse-drawn carriages. But beneath the planet's surface, communities can plug in their toasters without Damocles dropping a sword on their head.

The story's inciting incident occurs when the young female protagonist, Shaifennen Roehe, discovers an intact spacecraft from before the war. This find, and all the cargo it contains, place her suddenly in the lead, turning her homestead community into a boomtown.

Sadly, a few chapters in, the plot seemed to take a backseat to the exploration of the unique world and history Pierce had created. Chapters will pass with interesting, but not riveting, descriptions of various projects being executed. While the characters are struggling, the level of conflict remains too low to be overly engaging. That said, when the author does ramp up the odds and the tension, he proves that he is quite capable of crafting page-turning chapters with plenty of conflict. For example:

I wasn't gonna take anything out of his hide unless he barked his knuckles on my head.

He was going to hammer me into the ground like a skinny little tent peg. hit me so hard, people watching the vids a hundred years later would lose teeth. Best I could hope for was he was sober enough not to cripple or kill me.

None of that mattered, though. I had to show everybody that folks from Tewlvety Homestead never just roll over for people to tramp on us, no matter what the odds.

Not that I need a fist fight every chapter. I was just as happy with scenes such as:

He turned and raised his left hand to scratch his ear.

I politely ignored the fact that he was making a signal to some hidden shooters. The gate rolled open the rest of the way, and in we went.

Schaller ambled along all easy-like between Zeddie and me as we entered the stellement.

That was his way of being polite. Keeping himself within an easy blade's reach of both of us showed that he was putting himself as surety of our safety.

It was nice to see that even this close to the Towns, some folks remembered their manners.

Sadly, probably less than thirty percent of the chapters felt engaging enough from a purely story perspective. If the world weren't so interesting, I think the novel would have bombed.

But almost as good as the setting was the novel's narration — all told in the first-person, which I'll discuss in part two of my review, coming this Friday.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. You can find out more about J. Kenton Pierce's novels and short stories by hitching your wagon up and heading on over to his Tales From the Long Night Substack.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.