The Kendish Hit: An Avery Cates Short Story

I hope that Jeff Somers is making a fair bit of money because I want all the threads of his Avery Cates stories to come together. I've often said in my reviews that the backstory of the Cates universe is absolutely fascinating and terrifying. We've seen Cates' world go from a poverty-stricken cess pool to a depopulated planet where people have been “bricked” and the remaining population is sterile and dying.

Who is benefitting?

This book is kind of odd. The title story is a bona fide short story about Avery Cates' first murder for hire. The story shows Cates before he was uber-competent and uber-cocky. Nonetheless, because he's desperate, he picks a contract off the floor and freelances. The story has all of the Cates style. It even explains how he got introduced to the Roon automatic handgun.

The remaining four stories are actually chapters from prior books, or planned books, that Somers did not use. These chapters actually make decent short stories, but the reader really has to know the background of the characters to fully appreciate them. I know that I barely remembered some of the characters.

The final section, set after the collapse of the world, ends with Cates realizing that he has become the System.

Now, that is a great insight/development that portends the something deeper that I am expecting from Somers.