Barricade Paperback – September 15, 2015

The classic tale of man creates artificial life to fix man's mistakes, and AI decides the only thing to do is get rid of humanity and start over. This isn't about the lead up to judgment day, it's about the aftermath. And it isn't people trying to scrape by while fighting their creations, it's different and that difference is what makes this book work reading.Told from the perspective of artificial engineer model 9, Kenstibec, as he and his fellow "ficials" go about trying to cull what's left of humanity. The lack of passion combined with total commitment to purpose creates an interesting dynamic. K doesn't particularly want to kill people, but he's not bothered by the directive to do so.It's an interesting read and I'll be checking out the next book in the series.

I'm always looking for a decent read and this one fit the bill. I was not familiar with the works of Jon Wallace prior to discovering this title and I've been a bit reluctant to try different authors as of late because of a string of huge letdowns. But I was so happy that I decided to give this one a try. I had been searching for a sci-f story that was a bit different but at the same time did not just decide to throw massive scientific words at you that 95% of the planet have no idea what they mean. This story is smart, evenly paced and you'll have a hard time putting the book down. The characters were very well drawn out and you genuinely become engrossed with them. I only have a small handful of authors on my "go-to" list, but I'm very happy to say that Mr. Jon Wallace has now joined that list. Looking forward to what he'll bring us next!

Wow! A wonderful noirish post-human apocalyptic adventure! First ehm person thriller with a dry wry narrator who made me chuckle throughout.If you like the Road Warrior and After Dark, My Sweet and Ancillary Justice and Altered Carbon and The Petrovich Trilogy, this will be right up your alley.

Love this book and highly recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction, and or post apocalyptic stuff

Barricade by Jon Wallace, one of the Gollancz debut releases this year, has disappointed me. To say that is probably unfair, as the book is good without being able to reach further heights. So what's my problem? Am I just going to kick the book while its down for the heck of it? No, my problem stems from the description of the book. This had been the book from the Gollancz deal I'd looked forward to the most. Mainly because the description made my mouth water. His fare is a narcissistic journalist who's touchy about her luggage. His human guide is constantly plotting to kill him. And that's just the start of his troubles. On his journey he encounters ten-foot killer rats, a mutant king with a TV fixation, a drug-crazed army, and even the creator of the Ficial race.This is a short quote from the description. Seems totally over the top, doesn't it? A book that doesn't take itself quite serious, that might overflow with black humor. I mean it has ten-foot rats, a mutant king with a TV fixation, and the protagonist's fair seems to be quite crazy too. All of that is next to irrelevant. Let me tell you a bit more about what the book actually is, so you can judge for yourself.It's a rather common apocalyptic setting shortly after an attack with atomic bombs on England. The island had been the last inhabitable space on earth and those that got no place on it decided that no one should have it, so they bombed it. The humans in this setting are all poisoned by the radiation and don't have a very high life expectancy.We follow a so-called ficial, from a race of super humans that was originally engineered to build vast towers, so that the refugees that swarmed towards the island could find a place to live. These ficials now live in small strongholds besieged by the remaining humans and only a select few can still travel between these strongholds.One of them is Kenstibec, originally a builder model, who has now found his passion in driving as he's unable to build anymore. On the journey with the journalist, his fare, he notices that the world around him has changed and not everything might be as he thought it was.The biggest reason I deem this book a good read is the main character and the change he undergoes over the course of the journey. That's especially visible in his interaction with their guide, a human peddler they force to help them through the human checkpoints. He seems to transcend his inhuman and unemotional nature to finally become something more human, someone you can relate to.The story itself is just a short journey with small and large bumps that ends somewhere strange and uncertain.[...]Concluding: If you're in the mood for a dark near future apocalyptic vision that has unhuman supermen and women, with humanity deformed and forced to live in a poisonous and dangerous world, then this might be the book for you. The book's main strength lies in its protagonist and it might be something for you if you like to see believeable change in your main characters. I'd suggest you ignore the "vibe/tone" of the description, as that's more of a mislead than anything.Note: My disappointment with the description has no bearing on the overall rating.

The main protagonist that is Kentisbec comes across as a bridge between the 'Reals' and the 'Ficials' in this terribly dark post apocalyptic road trip tale of retribution. I was very drawn to Kentisbec as he tried to understand humanity's apparent drive to decimate itself and the planet they live on while at the same time creating some of the most amazing objects, which includes himself.Barricade is not at all for the feint of heart and in these times of uncertainty make for difficult reading at times, but the pacing the prose is difficult to fault. Highly recommended!

It's refreshing how the reader is thrown straight into the action. Rather than the long, self-loving exposition sci-fi and fantasy writers often begin with, Wallace has you on the edge of your seat and chomping at the bit to find out how this post-apocalyptic world came to be. The characters are intriguing and the plot unfolds with some gritty, slaps in the face that you won't see coming. This is a great, fast-paced read.

Very enjoyable mix of Blade Runner, Mad Max, a good Neal Stephenson-novel, the 28 days/weeks-sequence, Driving Miss Daisy and half a dozen more SF 'tropes'. Eager to read the sequel (I only hope the author does not drag this series out too long and thus water it down) .Highly recommended.

Didn't work for me, couldn't get into the story at all and disliked all the characters.

I'm a fan of sci-fi television and really enjoyed Barricade. It's fast paced, exciting and even gory! It really makes you think about how humans would interact with artificial life. Highly recommended and looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

I feel the author thought Philip K Dick's replicants didn't get fair representation 😀 very enjoyable read, a real page turner, (or swiper!)

Great series! Beautifully written and hard to put down. Great first book!

Well weird!

Fast; original; very good.

Entre Mad Max et le Running Man, ce livre est de l'entertainment, comme un film d'action à la télé. C'est tout.

Not a lot to say about this, it is well written but the characters have no personality and the plot has no originality, a dull ride through a dull land.Its not terrible, it will kill some time if you have nothing else to read but I certainly won't be getting any more books in the series.

Fun, and grimly funny read. And far better written than most new sci-fi. Hope to see more from this author soon.

There is nothing very new in speculative fiction, all the way back to Asimov's Laws of Robotics and many times since then, in the thought that if you once make machines that are like humans but faster, smarter, stronger and not subject to various human inconveniences and weaknesses, before long not only will mere humans not like them much, in our usual xenophobic,biogoted way, but the machines will very quickly start to wonder why they should let us clutter up the planet and continue to screw things up, as we are so manifestly good at doing .So rather than start there, this author just jumps straight in, takes all the above as read and wastes no time getting on with it. We pitch right in to a post apocalyptic Edinburgh, under a nuclear winter sky, populated by artificial people (engineered humans of Ficials), set in a devastated landscape and besieged by the diseased remnants of humanity. As he sets off with a 'pleasure model'-turned-TV-presenter to reach what is left of the similarly enclaved London, in a reinforced and armoured Landrover, a parallel retrospective narrative tells us more about how our protagonist Kenstibec, and the rest of the world reached this gloomy point.Post Terminator, A.I., Bladerunner and Battlestar Galactica, all of which have explored the ethics of artificial intelligence and the potential differences and similarities between what we call human, and what is perhaps just sentience and intelligence, I found a lot to like about this novel. The current view of psychology is that a lot of what we all perceive as normal is merely cultural in origin, not hardwired in, and his attempt to portray the mindset of his engineered Ficials, lacking in affect and perhaps some emotions, and with few social conventions is quite convincing, if perhaps reminiscent of Asperger's syndrome. But then again, why wouldn't such minds resemble humans with an autism spectrum disorder?The relentless bleakness of the setting is relieved by considerable sprinklings of black humour, both from our protagonist and other characters, both human or Real, and engineered or Ficial. I also liked the exploration of issues of communication: even after the downfall of civilization we are still fed nonsense by the media, and everyone still worries about the American far right religious faction the residual U.S nuclear arsenal. And as someone who lives in this part of the country, I particularly enjoyed the battle around a strongpoint and bunker at Southwaite motorway services near Carlisle. The coffee shop on the southbound will never look quite the same...There is a lot crammed into this admirably succinct and rapidly plotted novel, which doesn't shrink from asking some very hard questions of the reader and his main characters, including 'If you were created and optimized to do things for humans, when they are all gone, what is the point of you ?'It stands alone as a complete work, in terms of plotting, but I kinda wish there was more

This novel is set in a post-apocalyptic Britain, where Reals (humans suffering from various diseases and radiation poisoning) are pitted against Ficials (artificial intelligences, fast healing and without emotions who are set on culling all the remaining Reals). The protagonist who tells the story in alternate chapters set in present and past, is a Ficial, Kenstibec, who drives a taxi through a war torn land to take a female journalist from Edinburgh to London.This is a book with much brutality and black humour, as Kenstibec fights his way south, picking up a Real, Fatty, on the way through murderous motorway services to York where his precious Landrover sinks into the mud and to get to London requires an old, shot up airplane.We go head on into a post-apocalyptic world, which, in view of all the dystopian literature out there is recognisable but at the same time tells its own story tightly and well. The narrator, Kenstibec, and the female Ficial, Starvie, being unemotional for most of the book did not really engage my sympathies but the Real, Fatty, becomes endearing in spite of his repulsive appearance. The character, or lack of it, in the narrator stopped me from awarding this book five stars but the story really takes off in the latter stages and becomes a very exciting read. Not for the faint-hearted, maybe; the violence is very strongly depicted, but it goes with the plot.This does appear to be a stand alone novel and is none the worse for that.

What happens if you create the perfect android? What if that android does not adhere to Asimovs 3 Laws of Robotics? Then in the mould og HAL in A Space Oddysey it becomes a machine that does what it thinks is right. In this case the world, and the UK in particular, would be better off without human interference. Journeying from Edinburgh to Croydon, yes Croydon, our 'hero' is an android, or 'ficial, trying to get a former Fembot to Control, the equivalent of Cyberdine Systems Skynet. Through the wasteland that was created when the the androids rebelled it is nightmare journey of mutated humans and zealous androids. Jon Wallace tries and succeeds to show what intelligence without emotion creates. Even at the end, and through flashback, the story isn't over. Just gripping.