Assault on Sunrise

New York: Tor, 2013. First edition, Hardcover, Fine in Fine dust jacket,. Stephan Martiniere. New York: Tor:, 2013. First edition, Hardcover, Fine in Fine dust jacket, 287 pp.<br/> Cover artwork by: Stephan Martiniere Michael Shea is always worth reading. "Less than a hundred years in the future, pollution, economic disaster, and the rapacious greed of the corporate oligarchy has brought America to its knees and created dystopian urban nightmares, of which L.A. may be the worst. Curtis, Japh, and Jool are film extras, who - with the help of a couple of very gutsy women - survived being anonymous players in a 'live-action' film in which getting killed on-screen meant getting killed for real. Surviving the shoot made them rich enough to escape the post-apocalyptic Hell that L.A. has become. But their survival was not what Panoply Studios' CEO Val Margolian had in mind, especially since it cost his company millions. Now he's taking his revenge. After several plainclothes police are found dead in the former extras' new home, the bucolic, peaceful town of Sunrise, California, the entire town is subjected to Margolian's invidious plan to punish the entire town...and make a fortune doing it. Margolian has created toxic, murderous wasp-like mechanical creatures to set upon the people of Sunrise, while his film crew captures the carnage in what promises to be the bloodiest 'live-action' film yet. With their haven from L.A. besieged by the deadly assault, the former extras - and their fellow townspeople - are faced with a grim task: to defeat the creatures and take back their town and their freedom. Michael Shea's Assault on Sunrise is a saga of courage and sacrifice in a world gone mad."