cover image Sleeper Protocol

Sleeper Protocol

Kevin Ikenberry. Red Adept, $15.99 trade paper (292p) ISBN 978-1-940215-60-0

Ikenberry's amnesiac protagonist's struggle to discover his identity in a world several centuries ahead of his 21st-century experience is an emotionally powerful debut, despite the author's simplistic understanding of romance and politics. On a dystopian Earth, the protagonist awakes%E2%80%94without his memories%E2%80%94under medical supervision. He's sent on a walkabout through Australia, and eventually a degraded United States, to organically integrate his mind to the present by sparking memories of his past. A female guide protocol A.I. inside his head becomes fiercely protective of him, and a scientist named Berkeley Bennett comes to him in an attempt to enhance recall with emotion. Meanwhile, competing factions watch him as an experiment to determine whether clones of soldiers from a time when humans knew how to fight could become an effective, expendable army to engage an alien threat. Though Ikenberry's storytelling is ungraceful in places, his insight into the human side of the military mind has strong appeal. (Jan.)