THE NINTH METAL

RELEASED OUT NOW! 288 pages | Paperback/ebook/ audiobook

Author Benjamin Percy Publisher Hodder & Stoughton

Comets colliding with Earth are usually the starting point for post-apocalyptic tales, but Benjamin Percy steers a different course with The Ninth Metal, one that belies his parallel career as a comic book writer.

When the comet Cain impacts, it spreads large quantities of an alien metal over vast areas of the Earth’s surface. Dubbed “omnimetal”, it soon becomes the world’s new primary source of power, with knock-on effects on economies, society and even religion. It also alters a young boy in North America, giving him powers that the military is keen to exploit. Unbeknown to them, he may not be the only one of his kind on the planet.

Sounds epic? Potentially, but this first book in the Comet Cycle only hints at the global picture. Instead it concentrates on a parochial story set in a rural Minnesotan town that has become the centre of a gold-rush style omnimetal rush. Full of Dallas-style drama among the members of a family-run metal business, crooked cops, dodgy scientists and superpowered carnage, the book has flashes of pulpy, if derivative, fun.

Sadly, these are buried in an insane amount of inelegantly inserted, backstory-filling flashbacks, which eventually border on self-parody. But there’s still a lot of this world to explore, and hints at bigger things to come. Dave Golder