Life gives Rogue Whip, the hero of Hydra’s Wake, quite a few lemons.
It may not count as a whole lemon when you find out that you have the same name as an infamous super spy, but when a sadist who gets off on torturing people confuses the two of you and has his goons shoot down your dirigible and you crash into a remote forest full of supersized primal beasts, the worst of which is a gigantic hydra that emits a hallucinogenic musk capable of turning people into zombies, it’s safe to say you’ve got yourself some citrus.
But Rogue Whip knows how to make one heck of a special lemonade.
Not only must Rogue figure out how to get back home without being eaten by the hydra and half a dozen other monsters, he has to evade the heavily-armed mercenaries who have come to finish the job–and save the smoking hot daughter of the infamous super spy even though she can’t speak and only communicates in Morse Code (their romance is one of the most touching things I’ve read in a long time).
As you might expect, there’s a lot of carnage along the way–bones get crushed, bodies impaled, and in the end almost everyone gets chomped or blown up–but you don’t get lemonade without squeezing hard.
The world-building in Hydra’s Wake is excellent. Not only are the monsters exciting and original, I also loved the dual planets Heart and Shell, collided long ago and now orbiting each other with a strange gravity-flipping zone in between. Zeppelins traverse this zone, ferrying people and machines from one planet to the other. This is a world I want more of! More monsters! More zeppelins! More Rogue Whip!
Hydra’s Wake is the kind of lemonade that’s oh-so-sour, just a little sweet, and completely refreshing.