We’ve all seen movies and TV shows in which someone is forced to commit a crime on someone else’s behalf because the latter is holding the former’s loved one hostage. But while that’s also the premise of Mike Brook’s new sci-fi novel Dark Deeds (paperback, Kindle) — the third in his Keiko series after Dark Run and Dark Sky — in talking to Brooks about this novel, he revealed that the kidnap victim in his story didn’t just sit back and let this all play out.
One of my favorite novels from 2016 was Mike Brooks’ sci-fi novel Dark Run. With the sequel, Dark Sky (paperback, digital), now out in the U.S., and a third installment, Dark Deeds (paperback, digital), slated for release on October 10th, I spoke to him about what inspired this second chapter and how it connects to the other books in his Keiko series.
Though it only lasted long enough for fourteen episodes and a movie, Joss Whedon’s space Western TV series Firefly and its cinematic continuation Serenity has been far more influential than you might expect. Consider Mike Brook’s sci-fi novel Dark Run (paperback, digital), which follows a group of intergalactic smugglers who, in a different life, would probably rub elbows with Mal Reynolds, Zoe, and the crew of Serenity‘s titular spaceship. Though in talking to Brooks about the book, it seems there was a bigger influence on Dark Run than Whedon’s cult TV show.