Author: A J Ryan
Published: 2023
Target audience: Adults ages 18+
A man wakes up on a boat at sea with no memory of his name or where he is. He is not alone - there are six others, each with a unique set of skills. None of them can remember who they are. All of them possess a gun.
With no way to stop the boat or know where it is heading, the group agrees to work together to survive whatever is coming.
But as they move through the mist-shrouded waters, divisions begin to form. Who is directing the boat, and to what end? Why can’t they remember anything?
And what are the screams they can hear beyond the mist?
Review:
‘The Last of Us’ meets ‘Bird Box’ in this gripping sci-fi thriller from bestselling fantasy author Anthony Ryan. Written under the pseudonym of A. J. Ryan, ‘Red River Seven’ is an action-packed tale of desperation, a secret mission, a destroyed city, a reluctant team of specialists, and the horrors stalking them.
A foundational aspect of this novel is the characters’ lack of memories. Amnesia as a storytelling device is tricky as it strips characters of their memorable traits and distinguishing characteristics. This issue is acutely present in the beginning chapters, when multiple amnesiac people are essentially spouting exposition at each other to determine their individual basic personality traits and defining skillsets. While the characters’ personalities remain more archetypal than comprehensively developed, the story compensates by focusing on the mystery of the characters’ circumstances, successfully building a sense of unease and urgency.
We follow the perspective of a man known as Huxley - believed by the other group members to be a detective or investigator of sorts - as they realise they each have identical surgical scars, no personal memories, and the names of authors tattooed on their wrists: Plath, Rhys, Pynchon, Golding, Dickinson, and Conrad. The group begins receiving orders via radio to proceed, yet as they search for clues, an ugly reality is revealed. Their journey evokes a pervasive vulnerability, defiance, and grim perseverance in the face of the unknown that will have reader’s fixated, especially as the groups' numbers start to rapidly and violently dwindle.
‘Red River Seven’ is not a ground-breaking story. It does not do anything radically new or reinvent the genre, and plays its tropes in a straight and familiar manner. What it does do is deliver a fast-paced, apocalyptic adventure with an intriguing ending that will throughly entertain you. Reading this felt like kicking back and watching a "dumb fun" action movie, and it had me so hooked that I read it in one sitting. If you’re looking for a high-speed, engrossing, unstoppable read, then this is a book I definitely recommend.
Excerpt:
“…Plath might be right, you know: this could all be an experiment.”
Huxley inclined his head at the blackness beyond the windscreen. “If so, they’ve gone to pretty extreme lengths.”
“I don’t mean what’s out there, I mean us. We’re clearly here as a response to whatever happened, but that doesn’t mean we’re not an experiment, a test bed for the real attempt.”
“Or we are the real attempt.” He settled back in his seat, staring at the blinking dot on the map display. “All this automation, there has to be a reason for it. Didn’t it occur to you that we might be all that’s left?”