Review of Solid-State Shuffle by Jeffrey A. Ballard
Solid-State Shuffle by Jeffrey A. Ballard (New Rochester Publishing, 2006) is a action-packed, high-stakes heist novel set in a post-ocean rise Seattle. With a fun cast of main characters and hints at an intriguing backstory, the prose will carry you along through the book.
Isa and her team, consisting of her brother-from-another-mother Puo and her lover Winn, are high-tech thieves, hired to steal a hard drive. But things go awry when they realize the allegedly secure underwater vault has already been breached. And the problems only snowball from there.
It’s always interesting to me to see Seattle through the eyes of an author who lives halfway across the country. I felt like there were a lot of missed opportunities to namedrop landmarks that a local author would have included. (The Space Needle is on the cover, but it doesn’t come up in the story at all.) I also thought there was some overwrought description here and there. But the characters and plot were solid, despite these other issues.
If you like heists and post-apocalyptic settings that don’t involve zombies or other monsters, you might enjoy Solid-State Shuffle. And if you do, it’s the first book in a complete series of five (plus a novelette), so there’s plenty more after this book!
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