The best action oriented books that make you think

This book is relevant today. Our country is going through the turmoil of distress caused by the breakdown of civil order and the looming scarcity of basic necessities like energy, food, and water. The scenario here is about the intersection of several groups of people and how well they prepared for surviving the first several days of a catastrophic event. There is good survival preparation information embedded in the text that can be augmented by the many real survivalist organizations. In crafting the story, the author does the same thing I do…layering useful, real-world information into the fictional narrative. Another real-world question is considered here. If there were no police, National Guard, FEMA, or aid groups, what would you be able to do for you and your family? The message in this book leaves us hopeful. 

I write in the speculative fiction genre where an overwhelming event, seemingly beyond the control of the main characters, underpins what happens to those characters. This particular drama uses such an event which literally paints a canvas for a murder mystery. The typical resources available to law enforcement are stripped away leaving people to depend upon themselves. All the human emotions and prejudices are on display. You might find yourself rooting for one character before moving on to another as the plot twists. A bit distracting was that much of the dialogue and description about what someone was feeling was clichéd. The cataclysmic event itself was almost a sidebar in this volume, the first of the series, to the point where the murder mystery could stand on its own. That said, this story is a thought-provoker on a societal and individual level.

In my novels, the quiet depth of character development runs parallel to the action. This is the only way to make fighting for one's life mean anything. Shootings, explosions, high body counts, or a countdown to chaos may hold momentary interest but will not create any lasting memory or take-away useful in real life.  This story spends quite a lot of time on backstory and the emotional well from which the main characters spring. Some might desire a quicker path through this. Some might not. And quite a few false paths are developed as you’d expect in a who-done-it type novel. The story reaches a driving and satisfying conclusion but some might leave wondering about the author’s opinion of law enforcement as is spoken through her protagonist.

Many heroic characters are not flashy. This is the way I like to cast them in my novels. The principal characters in this fast-moving SiFi novel are that way. The story is revealed using a first-person approach, each chapter being in the voice of a particular character. I like the breezy nature of the dialog that allows emotional depth to gradually make an impact without getting bogged down in psychoanalysis. While the earth is frosting over with a new ice age and civilization grinds towards an uncertain future, national alliances are forming with the associated grasping and competition for limited resources. A genius scientist is tasked to find an answer and the author rightly avoids a deep dive, instead taking broad leaps across technological chasms. However, this novel gets you thinking about what you might do under similar circumstances.

I like to write stories where the protagonist is thrown into situations where they don’t know the extent of what they don’t know. This requires the character to be creative, courageous, and if they can, fearless or at least grow into this state of being. This is the exact case in Executive. The arc of the lead character grows from timid to confident over some twists and turns as malicious corporate personalities exert their influence over her. She slowly begins to realize her own power. The blend of real-world high-tech military hardware development provides a steady and interesting backdrop for the increasingly hostile life and death office politics. The story resolves as you’d expect so there is not a great moment of surprise revelation, but it is satisfying.