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Mind Storm: A Strykers Syndicate Novel    by K. M. Ruiz Amazon.com order for
Mind Storm
by K. M. Ruiz
Order:  USA  Can
St. Martin's, 2011 (2011)
Hardcover, e-Book

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* *   Reviewed by Hilary Williamson

Mind Storm by K. M. Ruiz is an action-packed post-apocalyptic thriller that's a cross between Psi Wars and X-Men. It's set in a future (2379) in which nuclear war almost annihilated mankind two hundred and fifty years before, and left a legacy of genetic mutation.

The story regularly flashes back to a time (2128) during the war when a little girl named Aisling - a psion who can see the future and mentions many of the individuals who play an important role in this story - is being studied in an Institute of Psionics Research.

In 2379 the pure humans have retained power. They capture and enslave - by means of neurotrackers grafted to cranial nerves - those born with psi abilities, and force them to do the will of the World Court as Strykers. Meanwhile they secretly implement a plan to send a select few off the dying Earth to colonize Mars.

The World Court is in league with Nathan Serca, head of Earth's most powerful family and secretly a multi-talented psion. He uses his own children (all psions) and his Warhounds (rogue psions secretly recruited from Stryker ranks) to carry out his own long-term plan for offworld domination. But Nathan's eldest son Lucas works against him.

Stryker Threnody Corwin, a psion who channels electricity, has come into disfavor for insubordination and has been assigned the job of tracking down a high-Classed psion who's running loose in the Slums of the Angels. She's accompanied by her partner Quinton, a pyrokinetic, and they're teamed with a local pair of dysfunctional psions, Kerr and Jason.

But someone else has plans for Threnody and her friends - Lucas Serca, executing a plan foreseen by Aisling centuries before, forcibly recruits them for his own game plan - to secure a seed bank that could be used to revitalize Earth before it's taken off-planet. They have 'a world to steal.'

It's quite a story - Mind Storm reads - and moves - like a video game, filled with psi action and violence. Though I had a little trouble with the premise (that psi-less humanity would be able to control powerful psions in the first place), I enjoyed it.

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