NOTHING IS PROMISED 1-4 by Susan Kaye Quinn-reviews

WHEN YOU HAD POWER
(Nothing is Promised 1)
by Susan Kay Quinn
Genre: post apocalyptic, speculative fiction, Hopepunk, climate fiction

FREE ebook: Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / B&N / KOBO / Google Play /

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date November 24, 2020

For better, for worse. In sickness and in health.
It’s a legal vow of care for families in 2050, a world beset by waves of climate-driven plagues.

Power engineer Lucía Ramirez long ago lost her family to one—she’d give anything to take that vow. The Power Islands give humanity a fighting chance, but tending kelp farms and solar lilies is a lonely job. The housing AI found her a family match, saying she should fit right in with the Senegalese retraining expert who’s a force of nature, the ex-Pandemic Corps cook with his own cozy channel, and even the writer who insists everything is stories, all the way down. This family of literal and metaphorical refugees could be the shelter she’s seeking from her own personal storm.

She needs this one to work.

Then an unscheduled power outage and a missing turtle-bot crack open a mystery. Something isn’t right on Power Island One, but every step she takes to solve it, someone else gets there first—and they’re determined to make her unsee what she’s seen. Lucía is an engineer, not a detective, but fixing this problem might cost her the one thing she truly needs: a home.

••••••••

REVIEW: WHEN YOU HAD POWER is the first instalment in Susan Kaye Quinn’s post apocalyptic, speculative fiction,hope-punk, series of interconnected story lines set in the year 2050. As a quick explanation, hope-punk is often about people fighting for a change in an dystopian setting such as a post apocalyptic society.

NOTE: Hope-punk is a genre that often focuses on people fighting for a change in a dystopian setting such as a post apocalyptic society.

SOME BACKGROUND: In the past thirty or so years, the world has been ravaged by several pandemics, ecological disasters, and global warming to the point that air quality is questionable, and food stocks are in short supply. The few remaining people are forced to apply for a ‘family’ and a place to live, often placing a number of people together in order to thrive. AIs are the norm; implants are used to communicate but someone is siphoning the power, threatening the few who survive.

Told from third person perspective (Lucia Ramirez) WHEN YOU HAD POWER follows power engineer Lucia Ramirez in the year 2050 on her first few days on the job at the Power Islands in California. Having walked away from her previous position at Oregon’s Power Island due in part to a toxic work environment, Lucia lands a coveted position in Southern California but our heroine may have gone from the proverbial ‘frying pan into the fire’. Unexplained intermittent power outages find our heroine on the hunt for the cause but Lucia is about to open a beehive of secrets that place a target on her back. As Lucia goes in search of an answer she will quickly discover all is not well at Power Island One.

Susan Kaye Quinn pulls the reader into a near future, post apocalyptic, hope-punk world where the planet is slowly spiralling out of control. Man has destroyed the environment, and the resulting fall-out is about to claim the few who survived. A dark but though provoking introduction to NOTHING IS PROMISED with a setting heavily immersed in scientific fact and fiction.

Own a copy

Reviewed by Sandy

_______

YOU KNEW THE PRICE
(Nothing is Promised 2)
by Susan Kaye Quinn
Genre: post apocalyptic, speculative fiction, Hopepunk, climate fiction

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / B&N / KOBO / Google Play /

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date February 18, 2021

The choice you make is the future you create.
Climate-driven plagues haunt humanity, and it’s Regional Director Zuri Hill-Gray’s job to keep the clean-energy grid running.

Zuri has the perfect life—a beautiful home on the Hillstead, a loving family, and a powerful job keeping the LA Basin’s grid humming. If only she didn’t see the ghost of her dead twin in the mirror. Her grief-counselor husband understands too much, her Aunties Cora and Vivian smother her to excess, and her mother can’t look at her daughter without seeing the half that’s missing. Zuri can’t begin to face her sister’s little daughter—to Ruby, Zuri is the ghost.

Which is why she’s running away to work, again, on the anniversary of her sister’s death.

Then a power engineer walks into Zuri’s office and claims someone is stealing energy from Power Island One—and they’ve tried to kill her to cover it up. The more Zuri digs, the more it’s clear someone’s been tinkering in the shut-down fusion labs. They’re going to dangerous lengths to hide it, and it’s been happening right under her nose. Which is how Regional Directors lose their jobs.

Zuri’s already lost her better half—she can’t afford to lose this, too.

••••••••

REVIEW: YOU KNEW THE PRICE is the second instalment in Susan Kaye Quinn’s post apocalyptic, speculative fiction, hope-punk, series of interconnected story lines set in the year 2050. YOU KNEW THE PRICE should not be read as a stand alone as it picks up two days after the events of book one WHEN YOU HAD POWER.

Told from third person perspective (Zuri ) YOU KNEW THE PRICE follows Zuri Hill- Gray, the Great Los Angeles Regional Director for the United States Energy Consortium (USEC) in the face of possible sabotage of the power grid on the Pacific coast. Power Island One engineer Lucia Ramirez (When You Had Power) has made it her mission to provide as much damning information about a possible saboteur but with it comes the knowledge that someone has taken control, and Zuri is unable to stop the people whose actions are about to hold the world hostage in a matter of days. As Zuri and Lucia mount an offensive in the face of betrayal, Zuri quickly discovers that to act means the possible destruction of life as they know it.

YOU KNEW THE PRICE is an intricately detailed story of possibilities and the potential for Earth’s destruction. As the pandemics ravage humanity, environmental and ecological disasters continue to destroy the air,water and ground quality leaving the world’s population dependent upon the powerful few. YOU KNEW THE PRICE is a thought-provoking, dark and edgy storyline heavily based in both scientific fact and fiction, a fiction that may be closer to reality than we could have ever imagined.

Copy supplied for review

_______

OF KINDNESS AND KILOWATTS
(Nothing is Promised 3)
by Susan Kaye Quinn
Genre: post apocalyptic, speculative fiction, Hopepunk, climate fiction

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / B&N / KOBO / Google Play /

RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2021.

Humanity is trapped in a loop.
As the world heats, it takes more energy to keep humanity from dying—a feedback loop that makes net-zero carbon increasingly impossible to reach.

Akemi’s job on the Public Utilities Commission has its own daily disasters—making sure the infrastructure of civilization keeps running is the most thankless job on the planet. When a double event hits—heatwave plus viral breakout—keeping the power on is an all-out battle. It doesn’t help that he’s distracted by his elderly father, who was struck down and neuro-compromised by the same virus that killed his mother the year before. Now his father is living in Akemi’s attic. They’d never had a relationship before, and that was a fair description of the state of things now.

Then an old friend’s daughter shows up with a mystery of physics… and a tale of stolen kilowatts and deadly intrigue. He would dismiss it outright, except she’s also the Regional Director of the power grid. Something isn’t right, and the Governor won’t accept excuses when the power goes out.

Sometimes, you’re the right person in the right place, whether you want to be or not.

•••••••••••

REVIEW: OF KINDNESS AND KILOWATTS is the third of four instalments in Susan Kaye Quinn’s post apocalyptic, speculative fiction, hope-punk, series of interconnected story lines set in the year 2050. OF KINDNESS AND KILOWATTS should not be read as a stand alone as it picks up shortly after the events of book two YOU KNEW THE PRICE.

Told from third person perspective (Akemi) OF KINDNESS AND KILOWATTS picks up immediately after the events of book two. Public Utilities Commissioner Akemi Sato is struggling in both his personal and professional life having lost his mother one year earlier, while his father’s mind slowly deteriorated as a result of the same pandemic but a visit from Zuri Hill-Gray (You Knew the Price 2) pulls Akemi into the search for the truth. As another airborne virus begins to ravage Huntington Beach, Akemi must begin an investigation into the blackouts, power surges, and the people behind a possible act of treason against the American people.

OF KINDNESS AND KILOWATTS reads like a PhD dissertation; a detailed and complex physics lecture, in both science fiction and fact, often overwhelming the story line premise. With the help of Zuri, and her tech-savvy friends, Akemi sets a plan into action to take down the people involved.

Copy supplied for review

______

YET YOU CRY WHEN IT HURTS
Nothing Is Promised 4
by Susan Kaye Quinn
Genre: post apocalyptic, speculative fiction, Hopepunk, climate fiction

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / B&N / KOBO / Google Play /

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date March 9, 2023

When the world is drowning, diplomacy is more than handshakes and headlines.

Nitara Desai has spent her life negotiating international agreements, easing points of conflict, and averting disasters. Worst-case scenarios belong in her nightmares, not the IEC’s daily reports. On a calm day, being a director at the International Energy Consortium only requires fixing CarbonCon translators for flustered Brazilian delegates. A thankless job, but the world is still drowning in CO2—there’s no choice but to keep treading.

On a bad day, it’s not just the Brazilians acting up, but the Americans walking out, and now the Governor of Southern California insisting on a clandestine meeting. Then a text comes from Matti, her solid rock in the stormy seas: Guess what? We’re getting married!

Suddenly, an earthquake is slow-rolling through her personal life as well.

She waited too long: to tell Matti how she feels, to quit the unwinnable race to net zero, to grab hold of the things that make life worth living, not just trying to stay afloat. When the governor reveals an impossible technology that could save the planet, but it’s in the hands of a murderously ambitious man, it’s a catastrophe she can’t turn away from. And it’s almost enough to distract her from everything falling apart. Work first, always.

And maybe that’s been the problem all along.

•••••••••

REVIEW: YET YOU CRY WHEN IT HURTS is the fourth and final instalment in Susan Kaye Quinn’s adult, near future NOTHING IS PROMISED post apocalyptic, speculative fiction, Hopepunk, climate fiction series of interconnected story lines set in the year 2050. YET YOU CRY WHEN IT HURTS should not be read as a stand alone as it picks up shortly after the events of book three OF KINDNESS AND KILOWATTS.

Told from third person perspective YET YOU CRY WHEN IT HURTS follows one man’s determination to take control of the world’s power supply. The people of Earth are struggling to find or make a clean, renewable source of power-Miller Zendek and James Ellis have developed something called zero point energy or ZPE, a system that opens up the universe and extracts energy, but in an effort to take control, Miller Zendek is ‘auctioning’ off the rights to the D-10 countries (think G7), hoping to become the world’s richest trillionaire. Nitara Desai, international treaty negotiator, is determined to stop Miller Zendek, at all costs, placing herself in the direct line of fire, a line that is quickly leading to her death. With the help of her team, and her best friend Matti, Nitara releases all of the specs and information about ZPE to the world, effectively destroying Miller’s quest for domination in the process.

Author Susan Kaye Quinn is a rocket scientist and an environmental engineer, and like the previous instalments YET YOU CRY WHEN IT HURTS reads like a PhD dissertation; a thought-provoking, detailed and complex physics lecture, in both science fiction and fact, often overwhelming the story line premise with copious acronyms (I had to keep a list), numerous people and culturally-specific names, as well as scientific terminology (again, both fact and fiction). The premise is well written, edgy and dramatic but often confusing and complicated; the characters are numerous, energetic and determined. The NOTHING IS PROMISED series is a cautionary tale of what ifs and whys.

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy