Acts of the Apostles

Acts of the Apostles is a science fiction novel by John Sundman.

I'm a bit less qualified to review this books, than normal, as it's part of a genre that I know next to nothing about, namely the conspiracy genre (if there's such a thing), or maybe it the techno-thriller genre, I don't know. But I'll take a crack at it anyway.

Our friendly software engineer Nick Aubrey, gets thrown into a nightmarish (or X-File'ish if you want) adventure, involving the Gulf War Syndrome, the death of several of Nicks friends, several rich maniacs going for world domination, scientists not taking responsibility for their workings and more conspiracy theories than you can shake a stick at. Like I said – I'm not really used to this genre, but it's pretty much like the science fiction genre in the respect that suspension of belief is the key (well, one of the keys) to making a story work. Sundman does this very well; he managed create a "well, everything is possible" feeling and make me believe these crazy things while the story was flowing and the pages were turning. Which are just about all you can ask when the ideas are this far out. Or are they? Well most of them are, but Sundman manages to inject some interesting thoughts about the way that we live and the things we cling to as basic truths. Not exactly mind blowingly thought provoking, but interesting.

The characters are believable and their normality makes a nice contrast the to weirdness of the story. I'll be looking forward to something else from Sundman and so should you.

The very small publisher Rosalita Associates publishes Acts of the Apostles (I'm not sure if they have published anything else), so chances are that you won't find it in you local bookstore. You can find it at amazon.com, but you can also it buy directly from Rosalita (link in the link section).