Knuckleduster

December 3, 2012
Veteran soldier Brody “Knuckleduster” Calhoun, blinded in an ambush and dependent on beta-carotene contact lenses for sight, spends his days doing community service and his nights as a vigilante, delivering violent revenge to abusive boyfriends and husbands on behalf of women who pay him for help. When Thorp Ashbury, Brody’s old army buddy, enlists his help to find Thorp’s missing sister, the trail leads them to a corporation whose mind-control experiments have driven a veteran to commit mass murder. The awkward premise sags further under Post’s erratic prose (“He, unlike many of the averted-eyed masses, gazed unflinchingly into the vacuous abyss that mankind had chiseled itself into”) and distracting perspective shifts, and the pacing is too slack for a thriller; too much time is spent on a serial killer with the improbable name of Titian Shandorf and a threadbare connection to the central conspiracy. Reader interest is likely to wander well before the plot starts to cohere in the second half.

January 1, 2013

Blinded while serving overseas, Brody "Knuckleduster" Calhoun has specially made carotene lenses that enable him to see. Unfortunately, the batteries that power them are very expensive, so he works as a vigilante-for-hire to pay for them. He specializes in payback against abusive husbands and boyfriends, but his work has landed him a number of convictions and a long probation. When a war buddy's sister goes missing, however, Brody answers the call of friendship and begins a search that will involve him in a dark conspiracy that threatens to destroy his hard-won values. VERDICT The novelty of a blind protagonist who "sees" through artificially induced eyesight lifts this debut sf action-adventure a cut above most of its subgenre. With a "tough-guy" hero and the personal code of male honor common to Westerns, it should appeal to fans of action/adventure and military sf.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2013
Broadwell Alexander Calhoun, known to his friends as Brody and to some unfortunates as Knuckleduster (on account of his weapon of choice, a metal plate he slides over his knuckles before he hits you), is blind. But special lenses allow him to see. Problem is, the lenses constantly need recharging, and batteries aren't cheap. So Brody, an army veteran living on a modest disability, earns a few extra bucks by (reluctantly) acting as muscle-for-hire for women who are in abusive relationships. When Brody's old army buddy asks him to find out what happened to his missing daughter, Brody faces a tough choice: step away, or wade in with both fists. Set in a future that feels just around the corner, the story should appeal to SF fansit has lots of new technology and terminologyand also to fans of Lee Child's Reacher novels. Like Jack Reacher, Brody is capable of using his brawn, but he never does so impulsivelyonly when his brain tells him violence is the only solution to a problem. There's plenty of room here for a sequel, or several, and that's a perfectly good thing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)