Abnormal Ends
by Bryan McBee
Genre: Science Fiction / Thriller
ISBN: 9781639889716
Print Length: 360 pages
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Reviewed by Jadidsa Perez
Futuristic and thrilling—Abnormal Ends brings a new, horrifying perspective to machines fighting back.
After an accomplished career as an FBI agent, Juan McCormack believes he’s ready to catch his thirteenth serial killer. He’s found links between close-and-shut cases where the perpetrator is in a sleepwalking state and kills an unsuspecting victim, only for the perpetrator to die eventually as well. He believes there is someone puppeteering these perceived perpetrators by manipulating their CVP or “consensual visage projectors” and their Link. As the novel is set well into the future, humans now have the capability of changing their outward appearance instantaneously and searching for anything via their Link.
Despite McCormack’s insistence that there is a dangerous killer on the loose, he is fired and has to go rogue to investigate. There, he meets Dominique, the only known “perpetrator” to survive after killing her victim. To clear Dominique’s name and restore McCormack’s reputation, they decide to take down whatever is lurking digitally in the shadows.
Readers are thrown into Dominique (Dee), McCormack, and Felix’s perspectives, while also getting exposition material from a mysterious source. This not only makes getting all of the foundation material easy, but it makes the worldbuilding more fun as a whole. Rather than have a single character explain all the facets of the world, it’s teased out cleverly. In one instance, Dee mentions how waking up and seeing advertisements in her vision are annoying, but she can’t turn them off since she gets a reduction in her rent. That’s a detail that plays a small role but enriches the world it’s set in effectively.
The motif of addiction is plaited quite well as the story progresses. The most obvious examples are McCormack and Dee’s mother, but in some way all of the characters dealt with having a toxic dependency on something. In Dee’s case, she has a hard time letting go of the Link (even though it is how she got manipulated in the first place) while Lash cannot move on from his sister. Although their common interest in taking down the serial killer is the catalyst for their friendship, their common flaw is what ultimately creates a bond. I felt emotionally invested in this motif, and I think others will too.
Although some of the initial twists are somewhat predictable, the ultimate unveiling is extremely shocking. It brings up a really great perspective on how the dependency on profit and greed can cause the exploitation of both machinery and humans alike, to the point where there is hardly any distinction. This would be a great next read for sci-fi or thriller fans who like well-executed ideas mixed with their shocking plotlines.
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