Raining Fire

Khanna wraps up his postapocalyptic adventure series with a capable page-turner. After the events of 2015’s Rising Tide, airship captain Ben Gold struggles to cope with the destruction of his airship and the presumed death of his scientist girlfriend, Miranda. Consumed with the desire to take revenge on those he deems responsible for his losses, he burns bridges with his last remaining friends and sets out to kill or be killed, no longer caring for his own safety. But as he comes to terms with the tragedies that have shaped his life, he finds a new goal: protecting a small band of survivors whose village has been ravaged by the pirates of Valhalla. He risks everything in a last-ditch assault on a floating city, only to make a terrifying discovery. Khanna skillfully depicts Ben as a broken, self-destructive, self-loathing figure hellbent on going out in a blaze of glory, but the nuances of characterization do nothing to make an often tedious protagonist sympathetic, and book lovers may not forgive him for his treatment of a library. That aside, the airships, slavers, cannibalistic Ferals, and visceral action scenes make this a worthy culmination to the series. Agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary. (July)