Product Description
It is the end of a nearly perfect society. Beautiful, happy people still drive electric cars to fulfilling jobs like any other day, but no one noticed that the Apocalypse began a few weeks ago.
Now the perfect society’s misfits are its only hope for salvation, but they’re barely keeping it together on a normal day: A detective burdened by an unforgivable failure investigates an impossible murder. An overweight nurse comes out of her shell exactly long enough to be attacked by a dead man. An introverted genius and his insecure girlfriend are marked for death by a conspiracy they didn’t know existed. Each of these damaged strangers holds a piece of the puzzle, but as they begin to find each other, they realize they are being stalked by a methodical killer with the pure heart of a child.
Now they must piece together the mystery and find the courage to stand together against impossible odds before the world goes dark forever.
Sometimes destiny falls unexpected into the most broken lives, like a stone fallen out of the clear black sky.
Reviews:
“Doty’s razor-sharp prose and impeccable sense of timing make this book difficult to put down… A fast-paced, highly entertaining thriller.” — Kirkus Discoveries
Awards:
2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) thriller semifinalist
J. T. Thorleifson @ 6:30 pm
Sometimes you get more than you pay for. The $2.99 Kindle edition of Lee Doty’s “Out of the Black” is a bargain. “Out of the Black” is an amalgam of cop thriller, science fiction and magical fantasy. The mix is highly entertaining. The plot is taught, fast moving, and original. The prose is solidly crafted. Characters are fully realized, engaging and likable. The plot lines of the two protagonists cleverly interweave to converge in a rousing climax. The dialog is delicious; I often found myself laughing out loud. Particularly enjoyable is the cop banter between protagonist Detective Ping Bannon and coworkers. On the funny meter “Out of the Black” compares well to, for example, “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson.
My only nitpick with “Out of the Black” is the omnipresence of ’80’s pop cultural references. For instance, Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut” is a cult classic for my generation, but perhaps of limited wider appeal. Such references make “Out of the Black” less accessible to a wider audience, and may ultimately detract from the book’s ability to stand the test of time.
I suspect Lee Doty is the outcome of a secret genetic experiment combining DNA from Richard K. Morgan and Dean Koontz. If so, he’s an experiment gone happily awry. Doty’s work combines the best of Morgan and Koontz, and exhibits a refreshing optimism and faith in humanity lacking in either. “Out of the Black” does not fit neatly into any single genre; no doubt this makes selling books tough for Mr. Doty. But for jaded readers lucky enough to find him, the result is pure delight. I can’t wait for more.
DAVID R THORSRUD @ 6:33 pm
Like the guy who watches his lawn grow, I am more a fan of science fiction than fantasy and almost didn’t buy this book. Unlike lawnmower man, I thought it was worth every penny – and more. The dialogue between the characters had me laughing out loud, the characters were interesting, the language was textured without being blatantly borrowed from other classic novels and the action was nonstop. Notably, the fantasy wasn’t the unicorn frolicking type, but the what-if-hyperdimensional-physics-and-virtual-realities-could-explain-mystical-experiences type…more like The Matrix than Merlin the Magician. And when I say mystical, it is more along the lines of Obi Wan talking to Luke when he was dropping the torpedo down the gopher hole and not a pedestrian morality tale of how a genocidal, all loving, omniscient god wants you to love your brother. There are numerous references to pop culture which I ate up…but then not everyone is both a fan of BladeRunner and man enough to quote Vanilla Ice when the groaning gets tough.
Oh, and for those who liked the soundtrack to The Matrix: on the last page, the author writes his idea of the musicians who would do the soundtrack to a movie version of the book. I discovered Etnica and have been listening to them while I program. The Etnica Pandora channel is better then the Deep House, Drum&Bass, Juno Reactor, Crystal Method, or Psy Trance channels I’ve been listening to. So, I got a twofer with this book.
James Kelling @ 9:01 pm
Doty’s Out of the Black is superb.
Ping Bannon, the protagonist, is an undauntable mix of Terry Pratchett’s Sam Vimes and Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently.
The world painted is a perfectly bizarre mix of an all too realistic future, and a fantasy that hints at Zelazny’s “The Chronicles of Amber”.
While this reminds you of every mystery and fantasy you’ve loved; Doty securely owns the world and masterfully paints his characters into the apocalypse. The wit and pace of it kept me reading and kept me grinning.
I couldn’t recommend this more.
Robbster @ 9:26 pm
This book is fun and well crafted. Plotting is top notch, the characters well developed, and the scenario quite interesting. Our main protagonist, Ping Bannon, is very likable, tough and talented, but does not take himself too seriously and neither does the author. Nor can Ping, once his more than human co-stars join him in the story!
Craft also matters to me. Are the plot elements internally consistent? Are cause and effect presented in a sensible framework, even when the “science” is beyond what is known today? Do the characters have realistic and varied emotional responses that fit the character as developed and yet deepen our knowledge of and connection with them? Do we discover the characters more through their action and dialog than through the author’s narrative? Doty gets most of this right.
Does Out of the Black stand at the very top of the genre, e.g., for me, with Asher’s Polity, or with Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels? No, hence the four stars on my scale, but it is still very good, and has, perhaps, a kinder heart than either of those two examples, an important characteristic in an often too-cold universe.
Nicely done, and fun to boot. I enjoyed this enough to say I’d be interested in other Doty material in the future.
Finally, it’s an absolute steal as a Kindle download!
Rusty Shackleford @ 11:24 pm
For $2.99 you really do get more than you pay for. By far, this is the best book that I’ve had the pleasure to read in a long while. I was blown away, couldn’t put it down and have been raving about it to all my book reading friends. When they asked what it was about, I really couldn’t even begin to describe it.
My only fear is that this writer will just disappear and we will be left with just this one piece and nothing more. God, I hope that doesn’t happen!
Do yourself a favor and pick it up.