Falling Sky-Rajan Khanna

Falling Sky

Rajan Khanna

Pyr, Oct 7 2014, $17.00

ISBN 9781616149826

The Bug virus went pandemic leaving much of the surface of the world to its “victims” the Ferals.  Most of the dwindling non-plagued humans either reside in fortresses or live in the sky to avoid the Bug; which is easy to catch through the exchange of bodily fluids. 

Cherub airship scavenger Ben Gold supplements income with occasional taxying research scientists studying the disease until he refuses to transport them when they request the captivity of a Feral to conduct live experiments.  However, he likes one of them Meredith, so when pirates threaten her and her peers, Gold ignores for the first time his father’s rules of survival of the smartest in a hostile environs to especially take care of one’s self at all times.  He mounts a rescue only to lose his vessel to the brigands.  Thus with allies, Gold enters the pirate-controlled sky high city Gastown to retrieve the Cherub; only to learn his adversaries have a bigger agenda.

Falling Sky is an exhilarating timely post-apocalyptic thriller in which the Khanna world is desolate and antagonistic on the ground and not much better in the air.  The hero reluctantly gets involved with the scientists due to his attraction to Meredith and what he learns in the city.  Though the pace decelerates at times due to the deep descriptions of a world gone mad leading to tsunami societal survival changes to the once accepted norm; this remains a remarkable first act.

Harriet Klausner