Publisher: Titan Books
Publication Date: June 2014
Fast Forward: 5
00 years…
Koko Martstellar has done her time. A one-time top-flyte corporate mercenary, Koko has since retired from her life of violence and adventure. She now spends her days running a high end bar and brothel on the Sixty Islands. The Sixty Islands are the pinnacle of the manufactured vacation experience: sex and violence served up any way you want it, all brought to you in the perfect Gilligan’s Island environment.
Only, y’know… sexier.
When Koko’s old comrade-at-arms Portia Delacompte sends a crew of armed personnel to take her out, Koko’s brothel is reduced to smoke and cinder, and Koko, barely makes it out alive in her one-woman escape pod.
Seeking refuge on the residential barge Alaunpaya in the low orbiting Second Free Zone, Koko needs to figure out a plan. Why has Portia turned against her? And why now? They’ve both been out of the corporate mercenary world for some time now. What’s going on? So many questions, and no easy answers. Koko knows her way around brothels, bars, and current world socio-political environments, but not the Second Free Zone. A chance encounter with suicidal security agent Flynn gives her a sympathetic partner to show her the ins and outs of life on Alaunpaya.
With Flynn in tow, Koko must stay ahead of the bounty hunters, keep her eye in her skull, and solve a mystery that may have already been wiped away by technology. Without putting too fine a point on it, KOKO TAKES A HOLIDAY is a super fun-time book. If Warren Ellis was gene spliced with Phillip K. Dick, this would be the result of their unholy union.
Kieran Shea’s fiction has historically landed more on the crime-side of your bookshelf. But with KOKO, Mr. Shea takes the reader on a bold journey into a true sci-fi wonderland. A world 500 years into the future, filled with selective mind wiping, ritual suicide, and worldwide political upheaval. Like all good speculative fiction, KOKO TAKES A HOLIDAY serves up elements of the fantastic. But if you squint real hard, you can just make it out in the far horizon of today.
Dan Malmon
