Publisher: ‎Independently published
First Publication:Â 2024
Book Summary: Dissonance, Volume II: Reckoning by Aaron Ryan
Bestselling author Aaron Ryan continues the epic journey begun in Volume I: Reality in an increasingly tense post apocalyptic landscape, set amidst a gritty, attainable future Earth in this military thrillers series.
Sergeant Cameron “Jet” Shipley lost everyone to the gorgons and has lost faith in the integrity of his own Command. But Cameron’s loss didn’t stop there. In a world rife with apocalyptic danger, it has become painfully apparent that humanity is still, even in the very throes of annihilation, at war with itself.
Finding himself a prisoner and eventual outlaw at the hands of those whom he once trusted most, Cameron must put his fate in the hands of his trusted confidants Lieutenant Allison Trudy, Private Liam “Fox” Mayfield, and Sergeant Joseph Bassett once more, endangering their very lives and freedom, as they and others come to his aid to join in the inevitable revolt against those in power who fail to see the truth: power corrupts, even on the very brink of extinction.
Shipley and his team must race against time to find compatriots who share their views, amassing support against the true foe. All the while, they must evade a merciless alien species that will not stop until the earth’s resources are drained dry, reducing it to a barren wasteland. In their quest for truth, they must remember one simple tenet as it pertains to the gorgons:
“One look, and it’s all over.”
Book Review: Dissonance, Volume II: Reckoning by Aaron Ryan
Well, damn. Just when you thought the apocalypse couldn’t get any bleaker, Aaron Ryan’s Dissonance, Volume II: Reckoning comes along and lets you know the real horror show has only just begun. Picking up right where the first book’s shattering events left off, this mercilessly compelling sequel rips the rug out from under any comfort zones and doubles down on taking the saga’s existential dread to the most uncompromising of depths.
On the surface level, Reckoning delivers all the visceral money shots sci-fi/horror fans crave – bigger, meaner aliens to shudder at; more blistering action set pieces to leave you slack-jawed; and ever-heightening doses of mayhem amped to feverish intensity. The phantasmagoric introduction of towering new “behemoth” gorgon variants, backed up by Ryan’s knack for vividly unsettling biological monster renders, is alone enough to permanently sear itself into your cerebral crevices.
But as readers of Volume I know full well, this saga has always been about so much more than mere genre checkers. Reckoning continues Ryan’s assault on easy escapism and creative complacencies by boldly dismantling its own narrative paradigms and subverting any remaining assumptions. Just when you think you know where the battle lines have been irreversibly drawn between humanity and the gorgon hordes, the author pulls the rug out in an audacious, game-changing pivot.
For the true villains turn out not to be the alien cosmic terrors rampaging across the earth, but rather the malignant insiders gnawing away at the governing structures of human leadership itself. In a realm-resetting reveal of blistering subversive audacity, protagonist Jet Shipley finds himself on the run and branded an outlaw fugitive by the very military command meant to be protecting the last remnants of civilization.
It’s a seismic status quo shift driven by Jet’s horrifying discovery that the government all the way up to the President has become utterly compromised by self-interest, sociopathy and genocidal depravity unlike anything imaginable. The obsession with preserving authority at all costs has mutated into a soulless death cult willing to sacrifice millions of civilian lives and sanction apocalyptic atrocities just to consolidated totalitarian control.
With that single masterstroke twist, Ryan takes his entire Dissonance narrative into uncharted existential territory far more daring than any conventional genre templates. For now, the urgent saga has transmogrified into an interrogation of not just the battle for physical survival, but the insidious ways moral decay, greed and corruption can sabotage civilizations from within at the most catastrophic of inflection points.
In many ways, Reckoning operates on a far more scorching philosophical frequency than most speculative fiction consumers may be accustomed to. As Jet goes on the run alongside rebel allies including the stalwart Lieutenant Trudy and the scarred, disillusioned military vet Captain Cardona, the story cycles through a constant refrain of harrowing ethical thorniness. If the salvation of the species requires surrendering our core assets of empathy, truth and human value systems, have we not already obliterated the essence of what makes our species transcendent to begin with?
It’s this grappling with the most elemental questions of justice, accountability and grace under civilization’s most dire pressures that gives Reckoning its inimitable smoldering power. By refusing to indulge in escapist retreats, Ryan keeps forcing his reader’s consciousnesses into a near-constant existential reckoning of what lines we’re willing to cross before surrendering claim to the last vestiges of moral purpose.
Staggering between the breathlessly paced action pyrotechnics and the more introspective character gravitas of figures like Jet’s new mentor Pastor Rosie, Reckoning shines as the stuff of searing catharsis and bracing self-inventory. The stakes extend far beyond the cosmically operatic stakes of alien invasion narratives into the soul of human identity itself. What’s worth salvaging when all norms have devolved into a state of nature? Who do we choose to become in the harshest of circumstances?
While the answers remain elusive (and likely will remain so heading into the climactic final volume), one thing has become crystalline – Aaron Ryan has forged something more than a propulsive genre entertainment here. Dissonance, Volume II: Reckoning is nothing less than an impassioned exhortation to wrestle with the daunting costs and imperatives of retaining individual ethical candor when all societal orders have collapsed. A call to keep fighting to preserve the regenerative sparks of purpose amidst the leveling ravages of authoritarianism run amok.
Or put more succinctly – this is the kind of pulse-pounding visionary fiction that essentially dares you not to blink. Challenge accepted.