THE EXCEPTIONALS BOOK 2: ACROSS THE WASTELAND
By Teel James Glenn
Publisher: Whiskey Creek Press
Genre: Science Fiction
SubGenre: Adventure
EBook formats ISBN: 978-1-60313-452-1
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-60313-451-4
Pages: eBook: 310
Price Starting At: $5.99
Is it in our future to a step back to tribal times?
“Across the Wasteland” is a much stronger and more involving read. The Exceptionals characters, mostly Lastshot and Skorpion, were easier to believe and accept. They are the new heroes of a very disturbing future.
“Across the Wasteland” travels with us to a part of our world turned into a wasteland due to via a massive whole in the ozone layer that we caused. This area “the zone” is a virtual dead man’s land. Nothing electrical works within its ozone free boundaries. The solar radiation can and does kill. Even Lastshot and Skorpion feel this area’s weakening powers.
However, as renegade Exceptional, Rokk, knows, life is always hidden deep inside Mother Earth. Rokk is “a full blood Seneca, a citizen of the Original Nation Confederacy” as well as an Exceptional. Mr. Glenn introduces an interesting future for North America and her Native Peoples.
Rokk knows the Law and Justice are sometimes opposites and, sadly, he has taken the law into his own hands to delivery justice. You will need to judge him for yourself.
The base story of “Across the Wasteland” is the survival of Lastshot and Skorpion as they strive to deliver Rokk to the proper authorities while keeping the civilians, whose plane was commandeered for Rokk’s transportation, alive. Within the Wastelands, our group encounters the locals, who were force to band together into warring tribes, packs of radioactively mutated wolves, and their own internal battles.
I like Lastshot here more than in Book 1 of The Exceptionals. Here he is faced with someone, Rokk, who is very much like Lastshot, but has crossed the very narrow line dividing the legal from the illegal. How Lastshot accepts or doesn’t accept Rokk made for a deeper reading of what is an adventure series.
This time around Mr. Glenn has produced one storyline and has run with it to my satisfaction. So, what’s so great about it being to my satisfaction? I’m no longer going to read Book 3 because I’m curious or because I’ve accepted the review request…I’m reading Book 3 because I want to revisit this series.
Well done, Mr. Glenn.