Review of Velocity Blues

Velocity Blues by Clifford Royal Johns

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I became aware of this book because the author is a member of my book club. The front cover blurb calls this book a "thrilling amalgam of neo-noir and cyberpunk" which is very accurate. As promised, I found the book "great stuff."

Our first-person protagonist, Zip, lives in a future Chicago. As a child, he was genetically altered to be super-intelligent. It worked - at age eight he was reading Aristotle in the original Ancient Greek. When puberty hit, he and other "E"'s or "Energies" became superfast - like running a mile in two minutes without effort. They also became unable to be still for more than a minute or so and completely unable to focus. As a result, they mostly spend their days running around Chicago.

This running is literal and the consequences of it are thought out. Zip is constantly eating, and frequently has to steal food mid-run. The only job he can hold, and he has a tenuous hold on it, is as a messenger for a "low-level hoodlum with delusions of mediocrity." His boss wants him to deliver something. Zip finds out that whatever he's carrying is valuable enough that people will kill for it.

The book then becomes a story of Zip trying to focus, not get killed by the various hoods after him, and figure out which of his E friends are loyal and which will betray him. It's a fast-paced novel with interesting characters. I found it highly enjoyable and a quick read.



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