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A review by whatmeworry
Once Dead by Richard Phillips
2.0
This review first appeared on on scifiandscary.com
‘Once Dead’ manages to be a horror novel, a sci fi novel and at the same time neither of those things. It’s a weird twist on the kind of ‘moody special forces guy growls and kicks butt’ books that proliferate on Kindle Unlimited where the twist is completely pointless.
It starts with moody special forces guy Jack (of course it’s Jack, they’re always called Jack) Gregory) getting killed in Calcutta whilst trying to avenge his brother’s death. As Jack slips into the afterlife he meets a being who is initially described as a demon, but later as an inter-dimensional mind worm, who offers Jack a second chance at life if he agrees to act as a human host for it.
The book is in some way related to another series by the same author which I haven’t read. I’m assuming the other series gives some kind of explanation of the origins of the inter-dimensional mind worm, as ‘Once Dead’ gives no explanation at all. Jack comes back to life, although his former CIA bosses think he is dead, and becomes a gun for hire. Now that he’s got an inter-dimensional mind worm on board he’s slightly moodier and more inclined to kick butts than he was before. But only slightly. With that set up out of the way, Jack’s companion hardly any further appearances in the book, and has absolutely no bearing on the plot.
That plot is your standard evil European billionaire trying to blow up the world affair, with a side order of Russian mafia enforcers and corrupt US intelligence officials. It has plenty of the standard action thriller tropes- lots of descriptions of guns, people doing clever things with computers, beautiful female operatives who fall for the hero despite how moody he is, intense rivalry between the different US intelligence agencies, etc, etc
It does also have some neat ideas - like the NSA-developed Big John, a data mining solution that is built into the kernel of every piece of anti virus software and uses the different devices it runs on as nodes in a global neural net. Any inventiveness gets drowned out by all the running around and shooting though.
It’s not a terrible book, some of the action sequences are really tense, but it just all feels a bit pointless. This is made even more the case by the fact that the horror/sci fi elements that are hinted at the start are completely lost as the book progressed. I can’t entirely hate a book that deliver lines like
“This would be his one-way ticket to hell. And on this train, Jacob Knox would be the conductor.”
With a straight face, but I won’t be rushing out to read more my Richard Phillips’ work.
‘Once Dead’ manages to be a horror novel, a sci fi novel and at the same time neither of those things. It’s a weird twist on the kind of ‘moody special forces guy growls and kicks butt’ books that proliferate on Kindle Unlimited where the twist is completely pointless.
It starts with moody special forces guy Jack (of course it’s Jack, they’re always called Jack) Gregory) getting killed in Calcutta whilst trying to avenge his brother’s death. As Jack slips into the afterlife he meets a being who is initially described as a demon, but later as an inter-dimensional mind worm, who offers Jack a second chance at life if he agrees to act as a human host for it.
The book is in some way related to another series by the same author which I haven’t read. I’m assuming the other series gives some kind of explanation of the origins of the inter-dimensional mind worm, as ‘Once Dead’ gives no explanation at all. Jack comes back to life, although his former CIA bosses think he is dead, and becomes a gun for hire. Now that he’s got an inter-dimensional mind worm on board he’s slightly moodier and more inclined to kick butts than he was before. But only slightly. With that set up out of the way, Jack’s companion hardly any further appearances in the book, and has absolutely no bearing on the plot.
That plot is your standard evil European billionaire trying to blow up the world affair, with a side order of Russian mafia enforcers and corrupt US intelligence officials. It has plenty of the standard action thriller tropes- lots of descriptions of guns, people doing clever things with computers, beautiful female operatives who fall for the hero despite how moody he is, intense rivalry between the different US intelligence agencies, etc, etc
It does also have some neat ideas - like the NSA-developed Big John, a data mining solution that is built into the kernel of every piece of anti virus software and uses the different devices it runs on as nodes in a global neural net. Any inventiveness gets drowned out by all the running around and shooting though.
It’s not a terrible book, some of the action sequences are really tense, but it just all feels a bit pointless. This is made even more the case by the fact that the horror/sci fi elements that are hinted at the start are completely lost as the book progressed. I can’t entirely hate a book that deliver lines like
“This would be his one-way ticket to hell. And on this train, Jacob Knox would be the conductor.”
With a straight face, but I won’t be rushing out to read more my Richard Phillips’ work.