The Electric Church

I should start off by saying that I don't think this is a novel with mass appeal. You would definitely have to already be a science fiction fan to enjoy it, I think, and even within that subset of readers only certain fans would grok to the style that Somers uses throughout.

The novel begins in a 70s-style dystopian future - the type one would have seen in Logan's Run or Soylent Green. In that environment we meet Avery Cates, a stereotypical antihero who will kill anyone if the price is right. He's given a big job - to take down the head of The Electric Church, a religious group that sucks the brains out of people's heads and puts them in mechanical bodies. As Avery recently saw a friend of his go through this procedure involuntarily, he's more than willing to take the job, especially as it promises to make him rich beyond his wildest dreams.

Avery assembles a team and eventually infiltrates the church. In doing so he comes to see that while being a rich asshole in a broken society might sound better than being a poor asshole in a broken society, that ‘broken society' thing remains a problem, especially when he realizes just how broken it is. By the end of the book he's still an asshole, but he's started on the path to becoming a revolutionary.

And that's where the book hit me - when I realised that it's central moral conundrum was that once you've gotten to that point where the boot is stomping on the face of humanity forever, the only way to get out from under it is to place your trust in an amoral monster. Who is exactly the last person you want in a position of power once it's time to try and rebuild. It will be really interesting to see how this develops through the rest of the series.