You can’t go wrong when you start with a shootout between an infamous bounty hunter and a bank-robbing space-crab on a garbage moon–and The Flames of the Inferno never goes wrong.
The bounty hunter, Marsh Wethers, has a lot in common with the greatest tough guys–Rambo, Han Solo, Conan the Barbarian–he’s a man with a plan for every situation (the old hologram trick works every time!), he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty (a good hero knows when to knee-cap a baddie), and boy, can he take a beating–but deep down, in his core, he’s a simple man: he knows the difference between right and wrong.
But if you think this is your typical bounty-hunter-must-bring-in-sweet-little-kid-who’s-actually-the-reincarnation-of-yoda kind of story, you have another thing coming. Wheels within wheels, baby!
Turns out, Marsh isn’t chasing a bounty after all. When he comes in to collect his money, he is arrested by his best friend and thrown into a jail cell. A jail cell that is next to the cell of a mysterious and broken figure who may just have the key to a dark tragedy in Marsh’s past.
Enter the prison-ship Inferno (heck, yes it is modeled on Dante’s nine circles of hell–like every badass prison should be). The Inferno ferries convicts to not just one, but two different prison moons (really good science fiction always has lots of moons).
Little does anyone know that one of the guards on the Inferno has been possessed by an ancient evil being known only as the Mass (does the Mass inhabit the body of a hot waitress in order to seduce the guard in the bathroom? Yes, because that is what ancient evil does).
The story really blasts off when the Mass takes over the Inferno and Marsh Wethers must assemble a team of galactic misfits to take down the Mass and figure out who was really behind the death of his true love.
I’m a big fan of McElhenny’s other work (Lethal Dangerousness–basically Santa Claus meets Breaking Bad–and Draculand–Kafka brings a vampire to the set of a Cohen brothers movie), and The Flames of the Inferno lives up to the high standard. Go read this book!