Directive 51

Holy shit!

Excuse my French, but that's what I utter every 3 pages in this new sci fi release. It's a story, told in a "24"-like play by play manner of a group called Daybreak, a mostly online kind of "meme," that launches a huge diabolical plan to take down the "Big System" aka civilization basically.

And my friend Jeff would be proud, the main manner it's done is with Nano technology (story's set 30 years in the future). The nanoswarm eats plastic and corrodes fossil fuels and metal. The interesting thing is that this Daybreak movement includes so many different factions: evangelicals, hippies, neo cons, environmentalists, even what they called "dissatisfied success" - people that made it but it wasn't really what they thought it'd be. But the movement is comprised of so many smaller groups, no one really knows who runs it, if in fact there is anyone running it. The only thing all these people have in common is they think things would be better without the Big System.

But then things go all sideways for everyone.

A vice president's plane is hijacked the very same morning Daybreak is launched (coincident?). One christian guy who was planting plastic eating bio weapons was enraged and had a great line "Only Americans can attack America." -that kind of sums up a lot about what I like about the book.

It's a revolving cast of characters, the main one probably being Heather who's a Washington analyst and former FBI agent. You feel like you're looking right over her shoulder, seeing IM's that pop up on her window while she's in a conference call. You kind of put the intel together yourself as you read along. Pretty cool

And, even though it's Apocalyptic, it hasn't been preachy at all. Even the zealot's arguments are countered by the next one's arguments as the story shifts from player to player. Done in a even handed way, so far.

Only in hardback, don't think an ebook exists yet. So far worth it though, can't put it down.