I’ve been trying to get a few more 2014 books under my belt before New Year’s, and next on the list is Kierran Shea’s first novel, “Koko Takes a Holiday.” If you’re looking for a family friendly, feel-good, classy novel…you’d better go look somewhere else.
But if you’re looking for a fun, violent, blood-and-gore sci-fi romp, you should check it out. It’s unapologetically over the top, but in spite of that it’s surprisingly intelligent. In between the sex and exploding bodies there’s some stuff that makes you think.
It’s five hundred years in the future, and the planet’s been through the ringer a few times, what with destruction to the environment, global wars and “a couple of centuries’ worth of false-start Armageddons.” Things are slightly more stable now, but only because corporations own pretty much everything, and they keep armies of soldiers and assassins to protect their property and acquire new assets.
The average, non-military person is over-stimulated, under-educated, de-sensitized, and mostly just trying to keep their head down until they can make enough money for whatever decadent and/or violent pastime is their thing.
Luxury resorts have sprung up on artificial islands to supply some of these pastimes. Deadly cage-matches, simulated natural disasters, and the chance to wipe out an entire (artificial) (we hope) village of innocents are just a few of the entertaining events you, and your family, can enjoy.
Koko is a no-nonsense, hard-drinking, ex-mercenary woman who’s very content in her new career: owner of a tropical bar and brothel. A male brothel, so scantily clad, pretty-yet-brainless boytoys are part of the scenery. (Honestly, after all the novels I’ve read that take place in the other kind of brothel, I really enjoyed the eye-candy-for-women aspect.)
Koko has a casual love of firearms and para-military tech, it’s fun to watch her drool over the specs on a Sig Sauer which, for anybody not up on modern day weaponry, comes from a company that got its start as a wagon factory in the 1800’s.
“Five hundred years of worldwide collapse and chaos – bet those lederhosen-sporting artifacts had no idea their little wagon factory would still be around, kicking so much ass. Chocolate and guns, those Swiss sons of bitches truly knew their way to a girl’s heart.”
Unfortunately the fun comes to an end when her boss tries to kill her, and Koko has no idea why. For that matter, Koko’s boss has no idea why, she just knows Koko needs to be dead, immediately. It takes most of the book to find out why, and the answer’s not for the easily squeamish, or the easily horrified.
What follows are massacres, chase scenes, ritualistic desecration of bodies, and lots of booze. It’s gloriously savage, but the author fits in thoughts about the future of our planet, the purpose of religion, and what happens when we stop asking questions of the Powers That Be.
One of those questions centers around Depressus. You’re right, it sounds like “depression” and that seems to be exactly what it is. Except if you’re diagnosed with it, you’re generally given about three months to live. And then you’re expected to kill yourself. Not privately mind you, oh no, that tends to leave messes that other people have to clean up. No, you’re encouraged to participate in “Embrace ceremonies.” They’re different on every large habitat-ship, but most of the time they just shoot up the “patients” with hallucinogens, open the cargo doors, and let them jump to their deaths. Televised, of course.
Koko, not much for toeing the line, thinks the entire thing is a bunch of corporate-sponsored brainwashing.
I’d thought for a minute the author might be taking a somewhat backwards view of depression, implying that anybody suffering from it should just get over it, learn to love life, kick the meds, etc etc. I have a problem with anybody who implies that people with depression “just aren’t trying hard enough,” but I don’t think that was his point.
I think he was imagining a future society, taken over by corporations, ruled by profits and the bottom line. A corporation wouldn’t want a depressed person around, because when they’re suffering the most they’re not productive, and they don’t think of their job first. A corporate-ruled society would spin things so that the public opinion would say “if you’re depressed, it’s fatal! It can’t be cured! You should kill yourself! Here, we’ll help..”
This way you thin the population, you get rid of anybody who might not be a top producer all the time, and you widen that net so that it gets even marginal people who are going through a rough patch and might not have been clinically depressed.
I think he believes a lot of people can be shaken out of their numbness if they wake up and look around themselves. But I don’t think he believes that everybody with depression isn’t trying hard enough. (At least, I hope not.)
All in all this was a really fun, quick read. It’s got a lot of deep things to say about where this planet could be headed if we quit paying attention.
It’s also got a lot of explosions, kickass women, and boy whores. Sure, pointing out our desensitization to violence with a book that glorifies violence is a little contradictory. But it sure was fun.