From SMD Archives: Brie McGill's debut sci-fi, Kain, is rich with the history of the genre. #fictionreview

Brie McGill’sKain, a cyberpunk sci-fi adventure, is a noisy, nerve rattling ride through a future dystopia. Lukian Valentin, the protagonist, is a government experiment;a super soldier with a partitioned mind who escapes his fate to reinvent himself. McGill’s narrative plants us deep within the government’s psychotic grip upon its citizens, who exist to serve the military ambitions of it sprawling control. The novel unfolds with action and angst, and McGill pulls the reader through a maze of a first act.

Eventually, Lukian senses a new life beyond his own reality, and finds his sense of duty eroding. He is either befriended or tailed by Aiden, another Empire drone, who rejects the Empire as he does. Lukian subsequently falls into a rabbit hole of identity crisis that threaten to bring him to the brink.  Just what is going on in his head? Who is Kain? Can it be he? Kain, and Lukian? And why is the Empire so interested in his doings? Krodha, a forbidding shadow figure looms over Lukian, like a Colonel Striker managing Logan from afar, watching the dark living weapon self-destruct. Lukian is haunted by phantoms, ghosts, memories and McGill brings the past into focus by putting her protagonist through a cerebral meat grinder.

Luckily he finds an out, and McGill taps into one of science fiction’s oldest thematic veins, the fish out of water theme.  Lukian has to reinvent himself, and marvels at Jambu, the outside worlds norms and values. He’s reborn, and like Frankenstein’s creature, has to reconcile his strength, his new emotions, his new identity. His fresh experiences add levity to a violent world, and when Lukian and Naoko get down and dirty, McGill balances the steamy with the lurid and reminds us, as Lukian is reminded, that love and sex can make even the darkest world a bit brighter, can give us hope when there is no hope.

Soon Lukian is rocking  serious computer hardware, and cash, and finds, essentially, another level of the double helix narrative, where he seeks revenge, closure, and peace. There’s love, lies, and a whole bunch of dead bodies and cool landscapes, McGill is a world builder, and her world of the Empire and it’s secret military police is rich and engrossing.

In Kain, McGill taps into a wellspring of archetypal imagery, a Jekyll and Hyde protagonist, the dystopian empire, the misunderstood outsider, the exotic healing islands,  the primordial cave Lukian is reborn into in the final half of the novel. McGill fabricates a thick yarn, one that is often busy and jammed packed with description and plot beacons. As she evolves as a writer and storyteller it will be interesting to see what McGill crafts, for this debut novel is rich with the history of the genre.

Three stars