Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America

<p>The full title of this book is <i>Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six after the Collapse of America</i>, and that, combined with the cover's old-style letterpress style is a strong premise for a book to actually deliver on. The post-apocalyptic novel is never out of vogue, and when times are bad, there's some comfort in reading just how bad things could really be under the warm fuzzy blanket of fiction. Slattery, whose day job is doing editorial stuff involving public policy (something I suspect is deliberately vague), shows us what could happen should the dollar implode, and the US adopts a governmental style similar to Somalia's -- which is to say, none at all. <p>Amid the chaos, the story of the Slick Six -- or more to the point, their reunion and triumph over an America gone rotten -- unfolds. Prior to the collapse, the Slick Six had been über-criminals, the untouchable elite, a team of six highly-specialized masterminds, pulling a variety of Bondian capers across the globe. With everything going down the crapper, supernatural ninja assassin Marco Oliveira finds himself sold down the river, or more accurately, down the sea in a prison boat, and the other five disband to manage their own survival techniques in these anarchic times. <p>When Marco finally escapes, he undertakes a mission to put the band back together, with a more altruistic goal this time. Arrayed against him are the forces of anarchy, and the super-nemesis of the Aardvark, a mythical crime boss whose activities post-collapse include the creation of a chaos-spanning slave network. The Aardvark's hatred of the Slick Six is legendary, and their attitude towards slavery makes it mutual, although this animosity has a much longer history. <p>As a backdrop to the Slick Six reunion, we see the fragmentation of the culture into a variety of escape/survival mechanisms, from the hippy nomadic life of Doctor San Diego and his Furthur-bussing Americoids to the deluded Swedish-cum-Amish lifestyle of Lindsborg. Forces of destruction loom around every corner, and Slattery weaves a fine thread of the supernatural and super-horrific among the unfolding story, all the way to the grand finale and obligatory coda. <p>Slattery's style is a breakneck profusion of images, memories and observations that takes some getting used to. Current events merge into flashbacks and further memories within the same page-long paragraph. Once you're comfortably in the groove though, it's a heady ride, one of those rare books where you dread the turning of the final pages because you know there's no more coming after that.