Stormblood – Jeremy Szal

“But that’s the burden of being human – doing right by the people you love, long after its stopped making sense.”

So what’s the book about?

To get the perfect soldiers Harmony injected volunteers with an alien drug. Through this injected alien DNA, thousands of soldiers became addicted to adrenaline and aggression. Even though this war was won, Harmony must now fight against the addicts and fight against its own manufactured drug war. Because the only “heroes” of the war become murder victims. And one of these “heroes”, a so-called Reaper, must now help the people who got him addicted. The ex-Reaper must now find out in his world what the true meaning of family is and fight his very own battle against his drug-infested body.

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Why I wanted to read this series?

I wanted to finally read a science fiction story and was so inundated with different stories that I didn’t know which book to choose. And it was only through a Twitter post that I discovered this book. At first I could only judge the book by the cover and it was so incredibly beautiful that I hoped so much that I would like the blurb too. And voila, the blurb was just as good as the cover! I liked the aspect that this story does not deal with spaceships like Star Trek, but that it also addresses a current topic, namely drug addiction.

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These aspects attracted me the most while reading.

• Vakov is a very interesting and complex protagonist. Because he has already experienced many things in his youth, Vak seems very mature and reflective. Also, the fact that the book is written in the first-person perspective gives the main character a certain depth and he does not seem one-dimensional.
• The concept of drugs as a kind of genetic manipulation was very interesting and I haven’t seen it in any other book before. Since I’m not a physicist and not at all versed in the subject, I found it nice to read something that even I can understand (hehe). I didn’t find the subject matter too far-fetched, but I could imagine that something like this would be possible even now. Furthermore, it was good to read that this drug was not put in a positive light, but despite the fact that it has many positive qualities, you still have to pay a price for it. And sometimes that is losing one’s own power of decision. Moreover, one has to say that the focus is not only on the drugs, which serve as a kind of genetic mutation, but also on alcohol. Which is always subliminally included in the story.
• Then the drug itself, Stormtech. I found the idea that you always have adrenaline in you very exciting. Because it didn’t seem superhuman like some superheroes, but very natural. Despite the fact that it’s an alien drug, only human factors are amplified. Even though it may sound very fun to always be full of adrenaline, Vak shows us that nobody would like to be full of more and more adrenaline.
• I think the flashbacks were my highlight because they added depth to the protagonist. It was so exciting to read why there is now a drug war. On the one hand, you had nice insights into the cohesion of the Reapers, but also into how much the drug can destroy you. Through the war, you saw what it did to Vak.

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So what are my final thoughts about it?

A book addictive as the drug that it is about! The whole story was fortunately not as action packed as it says on the cover, but it seemed like a detective story set in a depressive world. The whole mood of the book was rather depressive, as Vak had to struggle with many different things. On the one hand with himself, on the other hand with the drug and also with his family and of course with the murder cases. The setting and the ever-changing locations also played their part in the story. I especially liked the ramen restaurant, I would have loved to make myself ramen after reading these pages. And the ending was also very successful, although I don’t want to spoil anything here. So why do I give 4 stars despite only positively described facts? Well, sometimes I found the solutions to the individual actions too simple. Vak was able to turn every situation around somehow. In conclusion, I can say that it was a wonderful first science fiction book and that I am now very fond of the genre.

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My Rating

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