Book Title: Sleepwalkers: A Military Space Opera Series – Gravity City, Book 2
Authors: CJ Valin & Artie Cabrera
Publication Date: November 22, 2022
Available On: Amazon as an eBook, a paperback, and an Audible audiobook
Indie Athenaeum Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Two years after the tumultuous events of Thieves of Destiny, Book 1 in the Gravity City trilogy, Lieutenant Commander Johnny Rangers experiences one of the most horrifying experiences of his life after investigating a cave on the planet of Zefir-Five. What his team finds causes him to be fed up and want to take a military rotation back on Nebuna. He’s also given a mission to find Charlie Bravo and Koya Nyrus after they’ve been declared enemies of the state (!)
To take on this mission, serve his conscience, and remain in the Confederation Defense Force (CDF), he works through his options. Then, he decides to take on a new, unorthodox role: Deputy Sheriff of Gravity City under the command of General Hilt.
After an eight-year time jump, Rangers has cultivated a bad reputation with lawbreakers who hide in Gravity City. He meets a dame in a bar, who promptly gets murdered, setting into motion a series of events on Nebuna. He also picks up an unwanted kid sidekick named Dirt, who has more than one secret she is hiding.
This is just the beginning that sparks the entire plot of the novel, filled with robot gangs, crime lords, mega-corporations, corruption, super scientific advancements, virtual reality, superior technology, and one man trying to do some good. Can Rangers bring some law and order to a city that doesn’t seem to want it? Or will his crusade lead to loss and heartache for those around him?
Rangers has a surprising backstory filled with family issues and tragedy. This background imbues the character with deeper motivations without being stereotypical. He’s a complicated man whose family is also an unexpected one and they ground him in the gritty reality he lives in. Though he’s not perfect, he believes in justice and doesn’t care how he gets things done as long as it works. He’s a loose cannon but also a beacon of light in the city’s darkness.
Rangers is not the only one who has a colorful history. His fellow cops in Precinct Six also get time to shine as well. Sergeant Finn Samconi also joins Rangers in his quixotic quest but also has problems of his own with his daughter Sarai. Sarai lives on the streets and is involved with some shady characters.
And then there’s Captain Jonas Beta, who runs this group and is trying to fend off corporate interference from above. He has a hidden agenda to right a wrong committed against some of his fellow cops and will do anything to avenge them.
On the trail of a big story, journalist Slade Kincaid has been pursuing a story for over ten years about what he’s calling the “Khovalt Conspiracy.” The more he digs, the more he finds out about it and the more complicated it gets. Could he be on to something? And what does he find that validates his search for the truth?
Steeped in the darkness of a city filled with secrets, these side stories weave in and out of the primary tale about Johnny Rangers. It superbly fleshes out this universe and all the festering boils of evil that live in it.
It also illustrates how it’s busy, complicated, and messy, just like life and especially like life on a frontier planet filled with lawlessness and danger. Adding to these difficulties, it feels like you can’t trust ANYBODY in Gravity City! Everyone has a hidden agenda or secret that takes the story and turns it on its ear with many delicious twists.
One of the best hard-boiled lines in a book filled to bursting with them: “Stray bullets have no friends”. Another one would be “This guy is like recurring cancer. Every time I think I’m done with him, he comes back.”
It’s a fantastic book with so many interweaving plotlines and connections to other characters. There is a larger cast of characters here than you would suspect. A character mentioned in the first part of the book becomes crucial to understanding how it impacts the plot throughout the course of the novel. It also has severe repercussions for multiple characters as well as the larger underworld of the city and who runs it, Dickie Jets. Or is there someone else behind the scenes pulling the strings?
The whole novel is like that. Some characters have a small cameo appearance in the beginning and then take on much more significance later in the story. Some characters we thought we knew to have a previously unknown history with other characters, showing new layers to them. And other characters have undisclosed connections to the larger plot simmering in the background.
By the time I reached the end of the book, the hidden machinations of large mega-corporations and the ongoing corporate war between Axon Labs and Pantheon Industries came to the forefront. Inevitably, they reap what they sow, with explosive and deadly results. And how does all of this connect to the Sleepwalker program, the development of artificial intelligence, and the rise of the robot gang called the Soulless, who are crusading to get more legal rights as individuals?
Then, for the cherry on top, there is an exhilarating epilogue that connects to even more story threads and characters we haven’t seen since Thieves of Destiny.
Some characters get a quick and unimportant mention or a throwaway line. But then it turns out that it’s something that fleshes out the novel and it’s much more important than you initially thought. That kind of forethought and planning in this story makes for an extra captivating read.
There were many times when this happened. I had to go back to look at the seemingly throwaway references and saw how they planted an important seed that blooms later in the novel’s narrative. Because there are many different storylines in this novel, you might wonder whether they’re all tied up.
I’ll tell you that some of the main plots are tied up but there are plenty of dangling threads, waiting enticingly for the authors to pick up on them in the next and final book. This is by design; it has strong connections to the events from Thieves of Destiny and promises resolution by the end of the trilogy.
As a result, this story is very unpredictable. I never knew which way the story was going to go next, given all the different directions it went in. There are even some characters who were previously thought dead and some of them even get surprising resurrections, sometimes for nefarious reasons.
The final part of the novel and the sheer audacity of its revelations ties all the action and different characters together in such a cool way, pulling in all the disparate story threads. It then demonstrated to me the pure genius of the tapestry the authors wove together. The result was just pure wow!
Rangers, as the center of the action, goes through much development, though not in ways he might have known of. After an encounter with the Cynapse crystal over the course of his investigations, it has a powerful impact on him and his ability to fight crime in this dark city. The reader also becomes privy to some life events he is not even aware of, which promises to make the final novel especially intriguing.
One of my favorite characters is Dirt, who pulled on my emotional heartstrings, as I empathized with her plight. Dirt is one of the people who activate Johnny Rangers’ emotions. He doesn’t show much emotion, but Dirt also brings out a different side of him. Along with her is Nadir, who is a mother to Rangers of a sort. Her sage advice and empathic personality make her a good role model for Rangers. She acts as his conscience and represents an island of calm and safety for him amid the tumultuous storm that is Gravity City.
The authors pack a ton of ideas into this novel. As a reader, I got to completely immerse myself in this story continuing the expansive and imaginative universe created here. Rangers appears in much of this novel but it’s not entirely about him, it’s also about the conspiracies festering underneath the surface, the entire Gravity City experience, and its universe overall.
I’ve read many short stories and novels by these authors before, and they are always filled with a real flair for storytelling and a breadth of imagination that few others have. This novel is their best to date, filled with vibrant characters, deep intrigue, non-stop excitement, innovative ideas, and a bold storytelling style. Given all the story developments and events in this novel, the final novel of the trilogy promises to be spectacular, and I highly look forward to reading it.
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Previous Indie Athenaeum reviews about the Gravity City trilogy by Christopher J. Valin and Artie Cabrera include “Thieves of Destiny – Gravity City, Book 1.”
Previous Indie Athenaeum book reviews about anthologies and stories published by Artie Cabrera include “Citadel,” “I’m Not Dead – The Journals of Charles Dudley,” “Chronicle Worlds: B-Movie,” “Gravity City: Flesh and Blood“, “The Legends of Boone Ridge” and “Once Upon a Time in Gravity City“.
Previous Indie Athenaeum book reviews about stories published by Christopher J. Valin and co-written with Jaime Castle include include “Raptors 1 – Sidekick,“ “Raptors 2 – Superteam,“ and “Raptors 3 – Scions.”
Previous Indie Athenaeum book reviews about anthologies and stories published by Christopher J. Valin include “Chronicle Worlds: B-Movie“, “Best of Beyond the Stars: a space opera anthology“, “Beyond the Stars: Rocking Space: a space opera anthology,” “Chronicle Worlds: Legacy Fleet,” “Once Upon a Time in Gravity City“, “World Domination: A Supervillain Anthology“, and “It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane!: A Superhero Anthology“.
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