My Review of "Near Enemy"

Adam Sternbergh's Near Enemy: A Spademan Novel is an interesting book.  Set in a future New York City that has been ravaged by a terrorist attack, it's primary character is a former garbage-man turned hit-man, Spademan.  While Near Enemy is the second in a series (the first was Shovel Ready), this is the first Sternbergh novel I've read.

But it's a page-turner.

Most residents fled after the attacks and the ones who stayed escape through the limnosphere (called "the limn"), a virtual reality where people can live out their fantasies.  Everyone is safe in the limn, or so they thought.  Terrorists have discovered a way to kill people in the limn, a feat believed to be impossible.  Now it's up to Spademan to save the city and protect his make-shift family.

And what a character Spademan turns out to be.  He's talented with a box-cutter and his biting, sarcastic wit left me smiling page after page.  But he's not alone, either.  Nearly every character is so well written that Near Enemy is a real literary treat.  Particularly Persephone and Mark.

The plot, though, was the most intriguing.  Like most other dystopian stories, Near Enemy tells about a distant place in the future, but it could just as easily name our own world's fears of terrorism.  That also adds to this book's page-turner quality:  Because it trades on the anxieties we know all too well.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.