Blue War: A Punktown Novel

While it's not necessary to read Jeffrey Thomas's 'Deadstock' first, I highly recommend that you read it prior to diving into 'Blue War'. It will provide the backdrop for the enigmatic Jeremy Stake and his connections to Sinan and Thi Gonh. Private Investigator Jeremy Stake is a chameleon, a shifter, whose face changes outside of his control, usually into the face of the nearest person. Sometimes his genetic affliction helps his investigations, sometimes it hinders him. Eleven years ago, Jeremy was a soldier in the Blue War, a trans-dimensional war between Earth/Oasis against the planet Sinan (an extradimensional world). Sinan had it's own civil war between the Jin Haa and the Ha Jiin factions, a war now ended and the peoples separated by a neutral zone. Jeremy still loves Thi Gonh, a Ha Jiin, also known as The Earth Killer, though now Thi is a simple farmer and wife to a man named Hin. In Punktown (on the planet Oasis) a man named David Bright had a vision. He's developed organic "smart matter", a building material, and used it to construct a new condo project in the forests of Sinan near the neutral zone. But somehow the smart matter went haywire and instead of building a small condo project, it's now replicating the enormous city of Punktown on Oasis, overrunning the Jin Haa and Ha Jiin villages and farmlands. And it's not stopping. Now closing in on Di Noon, the capitol city of the Jin Haa, something must be done to stop it. The only clues to Bluetown are three clones found in the sprawling organic city, two dead but one five year old boy alive and well. Found with the clones were fragments of their identity - some gear and a few items of clothing. These fragments, along with the boy, could contain the clue to stopping Bluetown ... if they could be found. Colonial Forces Captain Rick Henderson approaches his old friend Jeremy Stake to take the job of unraveling the mystery of Bluetown, against the wishes of his commanding officer Colonel Dominic Gale. Jeremy accepts, not knowing that he's in for the ride of his life. Complicating his search is the "sinon gas" industry, and the conglomerate of the gas industry ran by Richard Argos. Sinon gas is emitted from the corpses of the dead Sinanese from their crypts, and used on Oasis for trans-dimensional travel. Eleven years after the war, corpses are becoming more scare and the lack of dead Sinanese threatens the gas production. Not to mention the Sinanese are already wary of Earthers because of a deadly STD brought to their planet via Earth. Jeremy must discover the secrets behind Bluetown and it's connection with Punktown. Through paranoid and corrupt politics, faceless priests who cannot speak but can kill with the volume of their chants, Snipes - half dog half humanoid, Benders - floating jellyfish that can cross dimenions and kill humans for food, and Carrion Trees who can travel independently and whose fruit smells like decomposition, Jeremy relentlessly probes the secrets

I liked this book, but I found its settings to be slightly less "weird" than some of his previous Punktown works. I was also a little distracted by the fact that the people, plants and animals were all direct analogs of Vietnam with maybe some weird blue skin thrown in. I also didn't feel like there was a lot of Cthulhu Mythos flavor to this one, unlike his previous works. It doesn't make the book any less reading, just not quite what I expected. I do recommend it, particularly if you liked Punktown.

It seems that the two first reviews give a lot of great information about this book, so I will keep mine short, sweet and to the point. If you love Jeffrey Thomas's Punktown, like me, you will love this book. If you have never read any of Jeffrey Thomas's Punktown stories, this is a great place to start and get hooked. And if you have never read any Jeffrey Thomas you have NO idea what you're missing, and I say get to it! This is a great one to start with. Punktown is a metropolis where humans and beings from other worlds and dimensions all reside together. It is a place full of darkness and mystery, with frequent shades of mythos thrown in for good measure. Blue War is Thomas's fourth Punktown novel, and second featuring private investigator Jeremy Stake, a mutant human who has taken his unusual morphing abilities up to the next level and uses them expertly in his career as a private investigator. Blue War is an exciting and intriguing page turner. I found it difficult to put this book down and am already anxiously awaiting Thomas's next Punktown creation. I highly recommend this book.

One critic wrote somewhere that the last part of BLUE WAR was the strongest. While that section of this story is surely strong, that critic should step back, I think, because he's missing the mark: The joy of this book, like DEADSTOCK, is following Private Investigator Jeremy Stake around in what has to be the most imaginative and original world in recent science fiction, Punktown. Besides that, the writing is top-notch throughout this book. Realistic, motivated characters interacting in fascinating settings. Even the "small stuff" is great, like the description of the blue-skinned Thi Gonh toiling in the earth, her clothing showing "the dirt of her labors." The scenery of the burnt-out Wonky Science lab was so well done, so realistic, that I easily imagined myself there. In fact, I found every scene, every character so credible that pages went by before I was even aware that I was a breathing creature who wasn't actually in the room with these people. Behind the deft writing and exciting settings, beyond the detective yarn, await some fun concepts: In DEADSTOCK, for example, we encounter a certain lover of Jeremy Stake's. Of course, Jeremy has the ability to shapeshift, and his lover takes advantage of this ability by making him watch movies with her favorite actors in them and once Jeremy changes into one of these fine actors, she, well, you know... Eventually, Jeremy feels used! It's comic scenes like this, coupled with captive action sequences, that move BLUE WAR as well. But I also came away from this novel truly hating two characters; that's how emotionally drawn they were. Fittingly, one was named Dink. BLUE WAR is the kind of book that's so well written you can hand it over to those snobby readers who "hate" science fiction and convert them; for even they can't deny its literary essence. I regretted finishing BLUE WAR, because now I'm facing the sad fact this book is over. What's really sad is seeing the likes of me back at Barnes & Noble, staring at walls of other sci-fi books that just don't live up to the creativity of these Jeremy Stake novels. Meanwhile, I'm applying for my passport to Punktown: I'm on the hunt for Mr. Thomas' novel, MONSTROCITY, eagerly awaiting the next Jermey Stake appearance--eagerly awaiting, too, the next Punktown novel that, rumor has it, is in the works...

Private Detective Jeremy Stake has chameleon-like abilities dubbed "restless skin". This mutation came in very handy during deep cover missions during the Blue War. The Blue War ended eleven years ago though. Now Jeremy keeps tight control on his features and tries not to look at anyone for too long, else his features will begin to mimic whoever he was looking at. For the most part, Jeremy succeeds. Yet every-now-and-then Jeremy forgets himself and finds himself with a stranger's face. When Colonial Forces Captain Rick Henderson shows up, Jeremy knows something interesting must be going on. Jeremy has not seen Rick since their time together in the Blue War. Sure enough, Rick needs his help on Sinan, in another dimension. (Sinan was where the Blue War was fought.) A company named Bright Horizon has been working with the Jin Haa, creating little condo-type village complexes, in and around the capital city of Di Noon. No one seems to know why, but the smart matter used to make the village complex is not following the program originally placed. The smart matter is supposed to make the complexes and then stop. Instead, the smart matter has begun making a clone of Punktown, which houses millions of people. People are calling it Bluetown. It has already grown much bigger than it was originally supposed to and Blue Town does not look like it will stop growing until it reaches the size of Punktown. Should this happen, the cities nearby will be totally wiped out, including Di Noon. There may be a new war between Ha Jinn, Jin Hass, and the Earth Colonies too. While the smart matter was consuming the area's vegetation to make a clone version of Punktown, it also seems to have consumed the remains of a few MIA soldiers. Three cloned humans are found in Bluetown. One of them, a five-year-old boy (nicknamed Brian), is alive! **** If you read DEADSTOCK then you already know Jeremy Stake and his morphing ability. Since Jeremy spent four years fighting on Sinan, he already knows much of the surroundings and customs. It is also where he met Thi Gonh (Earth Killer) and had an affair for one week. Being back on Sinan, Jeremy looks up Thi to see how she is doing. Therefore, readers delve deeper into what happened during the Blue War, as well as into Jeremy's personal background. It all runs, like sub-plots, during the Blue Town investigation. By writing in this way, the author makes Jeremy much more realistic, more human. This story is more than worth your time and money to pick up! Author Jeffery Thomas has the most intriguing writing style I've seen in quite a while. **** Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.