David Ketelsen's Reviews > Waterborne

I received a free copy of this book.

I'm giving this book a 3-star review. It's not lower because the book is fun, with nicely written action sequences, fascinating albeit improbable ideas, and compelling in a way. However the rating is this low because it's less a book and more a bunch of pages seeking a movie option--and I hope it gets it 'cause this would make a great movie.

This book continues the adventurous life of Jake Bendel, who was featured in the 2019 book Civil Terror: Gridlock, and his current effort is to provide easy and inexpensive water and energy to California via molten salt nuclear reactors. A noble cause made difficult due to the machinations of evil genius Viktor who uses a variety of direct and indirect actions to harm Jake and his friends as well as derail his engineering projects. This might sound dry but it's anything but. We encounter exploding houses, an disembodied eye, an ex-military assassin and his team, killer drones, industrial sabotage that harms hundreds of thousands and even plant blight. I almost forgot a Tesla with only half of its windows--too close to that exploding house. Unfortunately the author force feeds info to the reader via data dumps and the plot often advances in very forced ways. Lots of good ideas here but not presented very well and a kinda odd obsession with pens.