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Johannes Johns – Red Bush: The Redwood Revenger, Book Two

May 28, 2019 by A.S. Van Dorston

Red Bush is book two of an epic, post-dystopian solarpunk trilogy. This installment in the Redwood Revenger series is a bloody, sexy, and insanely fun adventure! The action happens in 2043, but jumps back to events in the 1690s that set the clock ticking for the Earth’s doom. As in book one, genres are hopped with ease: fantasy, sci-fi, cli-fi, satire, and now, historical nautical fiction, alien invasion, first contact, pirates, and Jacobean revenge tragedy(!).

Things pick up shortly after Olivia Ermine and friends, Byron Rosebeetle and Trudy Yamaguchi, discover evidence of Olivia’s connection to Red Bush, a vengeful 16th century pirate queen, as well as to the equally far-reaching roots of the evil VanDirks Corporation, whose actions in 1700 may condemn the Earth in 2043… even more so than global warming, a background character in its own right.

A passage from Red Bush’s 1690s-era diary illustrates the breathtakingly dramatic nature of her legacy:

“The Nihonjin light armor served, Dono Dakishimeru—my sword—still at my side, all of a piece, all covered in the blood of Company slavers. I wear my watered-steel faceplate, tempered until black. It is a demon’s face with heavy furrowed brows, bulging eyes, cheeks of curling flame, long fangs a’grinning—one pointing to heaven, the other to hell—a red moustache and beard made from dyed thatch. The red skulls hanging hollowly from my waist are cameloparded with drying blood, their dark sockets bearing silent witness to my revenge. The Morning Star hangs low in the sky next to a fading bone of crescent moon. They bear witness as I take off the demon’s face to accept the roasted heart of my enemy. I bite into the sinewy gobbet, warm blood gushes out of the hot, dark organ drenching my face from nose to neck—the taste is bitter and peppery. In that moment I am delivered for the second time and Red Bush The Pirate is truly born.”

While the story will match that intensity with a lethally bloody confrontation in Olivia’s era (2043), the book is also packed with the same wacky combo of high-brow writing and low-brow hijinks featured in book one. Gleeful shenanigans including a daring sabotage mission, inventive swazzle sex, possession by an ancient alien spirit that resembles a Sasquatch, tripping balls on the honey that preserved the remains of said alien, and the way over the top The Red Wood Revenger, a Jacobean revenge play parody set in 1700 on the NorCal shore. We also learn a dark secret about the mysterious, murderous woolen Monkey, with implications that will determine the fate of the Earth in an intergalactic conflict.

It’s possible to read book two and catch up on the story without having read book one, but I’d recommend it no more than I would dropping in on the middle of the Lord of The Rings or Star Wars – The Empire Strikes Back. I mean, you could, but it would be much richer having started at the beginning. Reading book two is like reuniting with old friends, making the roller-coaster action, relationships and character arcs that much more satisfying. While the core characters are in their late teens (or mid-300s in the case of the Pig or Monkey), it’s no more focused on a young adult audience, than say, Stranger Things is just for tweens and teens.

Even with the freshly revealed sinister backstory, Cascadia is a gloriously weird world that I’d love to live in. It’s definitely convincing as one worth risking lives to defend. The characters are still trying to do the courageous thing, no matter the odds or their fears, because it’s the right thing to do. The questions I have, leave me eager for more. What exactly is the Monkey’s true agenda? Will the people of Earth be offered up by VanDirks Corp. as literal lambs to slaughter, or will the ET Sasquatch seal their fate? What are the implications of faster than light travel? Can Olivia reconcile her morals with her newly uncovered bloodlust? I eagerly look forward to book three.

334 pages | $3.99 Amazon | Apple | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

RIYL: Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens, Thomas Pynchon, Alexandre Dumas, Neil Stephenson, Christopher Moore, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jonathan Swift, Rudy Rucker.

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