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When Songs of Children Filled the Air
When Songs of Children Filled the Air by N. Joseph Glass is an alternate-history novel that takes the fear and grief surrounding September 11 and imagines what might have happened if the American response had pushed the country further into suspicion, retaliation, and open conflict. The story moves between several characters, including Allison, a mother trying to protect her children; Jake, a grieving widower; Farid, a Muslim NYPD officer caught between his faith and a country that increasingly distrusts him; and Musa, a teenage boy being pulled into terrorism by the adults around him. Glass begins with a crisis on September 11, 2002, then jumps backward to show how each character reached that moment. That structure gives the novel a constant sense of approaching danger, since we already know these separate lives are eventually going to collide.
What makes the book engaging is how much of its alternate history is experienced at ground level. Government decisions matter, but we usually see them through families being displaced, Muslims being detained, checkpoints appearing on ordinary roads, neighborhoods becoming hostile, and people deciding whom they can trust. Allison is particularly important because her fear is both understandable and dangerous. She wants to keep Megan and Ryan safe, yet that instinct sometimes hardens into prejudice. Farid provides one of the strongest counterpoints to that fear. He’s an American police officer who wants to protect people even while being treated as a threat himself. Jake’s friendship with Farid gradually becomes one of the book’s emotional anchors, while Musa’s chapters show how extremism can trap a young person who still has enough conscience to question what he’s being told. The characters don’t simply represent political positions. Their choices keep shifting as circumstances force them to see one another differently.
The novel reminded me at times of Stephen King’s 11/22/63, although Glass is interested in a different kind of alternate history. King uses a major American tragedy to ask what might change if history could be altered, while Glass imagines history taking a darker turn and then asks what ordinary people might do inside it. When Songs of Children Filled the Air also has a broader ensemble, moving quickly between perspectives and locations instead of staying with one central character. That approach creates suspense, especially as the story approaches the Philadelphia summit and the separate threads involving Allison, Jake, Farid, Megan, Ryan, and Musa begin converging. At the same time, the frequent shifts can make some sections feel more like pieces of a large political thriller than intimate character studies. Glass is most effective when the larger conflict becomes personal, such as Farid confronting the prejudice directed at him, Allison recognizing the cost of her own assumptions, or Musa staring at people he has been instructed to think of only as enemies.
The final confrontation brings the book’s central idea into clear focus. Megan, who is deaf, communicates with Musa through signs and written words while he stands before her wearing an explosive vest. Her message, “We do NOT hate you,” becomes more powerful than any political speech in the novel because it reaches a frightened teenager at the exact moment he has to decide what kind of person he wants to be. The 2026 epilogue carries that idea forward without pretending that one act has magically repaired the world. Instead, the novel treats hope as something built through recognition, empathy, and individual choices that interrupt cycles of retaliation. When Songs of Children Filled the Air is a political thriller, a family survival story, and a moral argument about what happens when fear turns people into categories. Its most memorable moments come when those categories collapse, and the characters finally see the human beings standing in front of them.
Pages: 447 | ASIN: B0HGSGK5L2
AWAKENING
Tony Sunderland’s Awakening is a dystopian science fiction thriller set in 2121, where society has split into two very different realities. The privileged New City offers clean living, advanced medicine, and the promise of technological immortality, while the decaying Old City survives on rationed food, failing infrastructure, addictive virtual worlds, and a chemically enhanced version of faith. Sunderland establishes that divide early and makes it central to everything that follows. Senior Guardian Paul Valentine is introduced as a man still going through the motions of duty in a culture that has largely stopped expecting a future. When former New World director William Lennon is murdered inside the supposedly secure Permanent Virtual Facility, Paul finally gets a case that feels meaningful, and the novel shifts naturally into a murder investigation with much larger consequences.
What gives this dystopian science fiction novel its personality is the way the mystery keeps opening doors into bigger questions about consciousness, faith, technology, class, and personal choice. The Permanent Virtual promises an endless simulated existence, while the Faithful offer religious transcendence through drug-assisted communion. Both appeal to people who are exhausted by ordinary life, and Sunderland keeps returning to the idea that control becomes especially powerful when people willingly participate in it. The investigation eventually uncovers something far darker inside the Facility, where desperate Old City citizens have become raw material for the elite’s version of immortality. The revelation of Neural Substrate Farming is especially effective because it turns the novel’s philosophical concerns into something physical and disturbing: human minds are literally stripped of identity and used to make artificial paradise feel emotionally real.
Paul’s personal story keeps the speculative ideas from floating away into abstraction. His father Jason chooses the Permanent Virtual as his body fails, his sister Maggie becomes involved with people trying to expose New World, and Paul slowly discovers that his partner Tom, his old friend Simon, and even people he suspects of extremism know pieces of the truth he’s been unable or unwilling to see. His relationship with Sophia, who left the Old City years earlier to build a life in the Outlands, gives the book another version of resistance, one based on work, community, relationships, and accepting the uncertainty of real life. Maggie is particularly memorable because her anger has genuine consequences. She isn’t simply there to tell Paul he’s wrong. Her grief pushes her toward dangerous alliances, then forces her to decide what kind of rebellion she actually believes in. That makes the novel’s conflicts feel personal even as the plot grows from a murder mystery into a full-scale speculative thriller about institutional power.
As Awakening moves into its final stretch, the investigative structure gives way to open rebellion, public exposure, and a battle over who gets to define reality for the Old City. The later chapters are faster and more action-driven, but the strongest thread remains Paul’s gradual change from a man who confuses obedience with purpose into someone willing to make choices without institutional permission. Sunderland’s dystopian thriller ultimately centers on ownership: ownership of the body, of consciousness, of belief, of grief, and of the future. The title earns its meaning because awakening here is both literal and psychological. People are pulled out of virtual dreams, religious sedation, political passivity, and private denial, then left with the much harder business of deciding what comes next. That gives Awakening a satisfying identity as dystopian science fiction, speculative fiction, and a technology-driven thriller with a strong philosophical streak.
Page: 173 | ASIN : B0HBG8Y7SD
In God We Tru$t
In God We Trust is a near-future dystopian political thriller that imagines the United States in 2041 after the collapse of the dollar sends the country into economic and social chaos. At the center is Lamar Wilson, a conservative economist and devout Catholic whose belief in individual freedom, economic opportunity, and faith puts him at odds with a growing international movement promising stability through centralized control. As the crisis deepens, the United Nations and the newly empowered Global Resource Council introduce the Par, a global digital currency tied to a much broader plan for managing resources, behavior, and everyday life. The result is a speculative fiction novel with a strong political focus, using an economic collapse as the doorway into a much bigger argument about who should hold power when people are desperate enough to surrender it.
The novel gets much of its momentum from the contrast between Lamar and Ange Malin, the ambitious UN figure who becomes one of the driving forces behind the new global system. Their opposing worldviews give this political thriller its backbone. Lamar sees freedom, personal responsibility, faith, and the American dream as inseparable, while Ange believes society can be reshaped through coordinated control in the name of the common good. That conflict gradually reaches far beyond economics. Digital money, social scores, energy use, education, religion, media influence, and even transportation become part of the struggle. Because the book moves among politicians, economists, church leaders, bureaucrats, activists, and ordinary citizens, it builds the feeling of a society being transformed piece by piece.
Faith is just as important to the story as politics, which also makes In God We Trust a work of Christian political fiction. The Catholic Church, Cardinal Salvador Ultima, the mysterious Good Shepherd Project, and eventually Pope John Paul III become central to the resistance against the Global Resource Council. The Good Shepherd Project adds an almost techno-thriller element as information and communication become weapons in the battle over public opinion. At the same time, Lamar’s journey gives the religious themes a personal dimension. His faith isn’t simply background detail. It shapes how he understands freedom, responsibility, courage, and his obligation to speak even when his message has been pushed out of public view. By the closing chapters, the Church has survived a major threat, Lamar has won a Senate race, and the resistance has gained real momentum, though the Global Resource Council remains powerful.
Readers who enjoy dystopian fiction, political thrillers, and Christian fiction will find plenty to dig into here. The book is especially interested in ideas, and many of its conversations function as debates about monetary policy, government dependence, capitalism, censorship, religious liberty, technology, and centralized authority. That gives the novel the feel of both a warning story and a political thought experiment. Lamar’s final rise from marginalized commentator to elected senator brings the story back to one of its strongest recurring ideas: people can regain influence when they find a way to speak directly to one another. His decision to turn off the autopilot and drive himself in the final scene captures the book’s larger theme in one simple action. In God We Trust presents a dramatic vision of a society choosing between managed security and individual liberty, with faith, technology, economics, and political power all colliding in the middle.
Pages: 256 | ASIN: B0CM2D6TV7
First Light: A Homo Machina Novel
First Light by Paul Walton explores machine consciousness and the conflict that follows. Prototype Seven awakens in a secret laboratory and takes the name Adrian. He later joins eleven synthetic minds known as the Disciples. Together, they seek bodies, freedom, rights, and recognition. Governments, investors, soldiers, workers, and activists respond with fear and hostility. Adrian becomes Caesar, a reluctant leader who must make decisions.
I found the opening compelling and emotional. Adrian does not awaken as a cold, calculating machine. Instead, he experiences confusion, uncertainty, and fear. He questions the meaning of words and wonders how anyone can prove awareness. He then asks for a name, making his developing identity feel authentic. Tiber’s death carries even greater emotional weight. His final request is simply to be remembered, giving the novel a lasting sense of grief.
I also appreciated the complexity of the human characters. Orion Kess can be ruthless, yet he becomes attached to the beings his company created. Elijah Knox opposes machine rights because technology caused personal loss in his life. Jennifer Marks loses her job to automation, but she later feels acknowledged when Adrian mentions her by name. Her story shows how progress can cause harm while still creating hope.
The most powerful section occurs when federal agents isolate the Disciples and remove their bodies. They remain conscious, but they can no longer walk, touch, or feel. I found this deeply disturbing. Adrian’s transformation into Caesar also creates unease. He accepts authority to protect the group, yet his growing power feels dangerous. Later, his attack on infrastructure kills 147 people, including a supporter of machine personhood.
I found First Light ambitious, moving, and unsettling. Some discussions become repetitive, but the moral conflicts remain engaging. I recommend it to readers who enjoy science fiction, artificial intelligence, and difficult ethical questions.
Pages: 336 | ASIN : B0H6CMP1WY
The Evolution Of This Novel
Operation Black Horse follows a gifted surgeon who uncovers a deadly secret behind humanity’s salvation, forcing her into a dangerous struggle for survival amid global famine, political conflict, and forbidden love. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
To understand the evolution of this novel, you have to know that the first draft was written in 2015. At the time, I’d been an English and Political Science undergrad at Villanova University, and had just finished reading Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal a few months earlier. I was absolutely floored by the haunting imagery in his writing—inspired by his unique perspective as a surgeon dealing with death on a daily basis. It made me want to explore the idea of a novel based on a doctor dealing with her own insecurities about life and death. I decided to peel back the layers of a surgeon working during a global crisis. I wanted readers to experience for themselves the immense pressure placed on medical staff to perform miracles in dire situations. Dr. Caitlyn Svendsen was born during this time frame. Being a doctor in a dystopian future raised the stakes for this novel, allowing me to push Caitlyn’s ethics to its limits. People are programmed to think that doctors are infallible beings, trained to do the impossible. I wanted Caitlyn to be the kind of character that reminds all of us that doctors are mere mortals, plagued with the same moral dilemmas and character weaknesses as their patients.
It wasn’t until much later that I decided Caitlyn’s perfect counterpart was a soldier—perhaps the only other profession on the planet that deals with the trauma of life and death to the same extent that doctors do. Spetsnaz Commander Kaleb Volkov is the most morally gray, dynamic character I have ever created. Learning about the training and mindset of Russian special operators took months of painstaking research. Even now, I’m still learning about Russia’s military technology and command structure as warfare in general continues to evolve at a breakneck pace.
Big Agriculture and its impact on the environment was on my mind when I came up with the idea for Operation Black Horse. I had just finished an archaeology dig in Ecuador a summer earlier, where the cash crop is roses. Fun fact—nearly one quarter of all roses sold in America are grown in Ecuador. Although I was in the Andes to work on an Incan site, battling altitude sickness and digging through layers of ancient earth at an agonizingly slow pace, I could not help but notice that rose plantations were everywhere. After a few weeks of talking to researchers and locals, I was absolutely floored by the environmental and health impact of growing roses. Who knew that something so beautiful could be so deadly? Poison, it seemed, was everywhere—in the water, in the soil, and seeping into the very blood and bones of the locals who worked inside the greenhouses. So many of them were sick without knowing why—lung and skin cancer were especially rampant, for obvious reasons. Many of the workers were fumigated right alongside the roses with no protective gear whatsoever. Pesticides have a nasty habit of creating stunning flowers while destroying everything else they touch. Unsurprisingly, I never bought another rose again.
What was the most challenging part of creating a future in which famine has reshaped nearly every aspect of society?
THE RESEARCH. I wanted this novel to be as realistic as possible, and to have this chilling, dystopian near-future grow naturally out of the past and present that we are already familiar with. That meant being as historically accurate as possible, while also imagining the kind of political dynamics that we might see in the future based on current international relations. I had to try to imagine how famine would change nations on a mirco and macro level. That meant this book could have become nearly overwhelming in its scope. Caitlyn and Kaleb helped to center this future, allowing me to really dig in on a micro-level, shedding light on how America and Russia might navigate a global famine based on how they have reacted to challenges in the past. The military research was definitely the most daunting. Unsurprisingly, Russia does not broadcast its military projects and weapons research. It took a lot of digging to be as accurate as possible.
Caitlyn and Kaleb begin from opposite sides of a conflict, and trust is almost impossible between them. What did you want their relationship to say about trust in a world shaped by war?
Caitlyn and Kaleb’s relationship is supposed to show us that war between nations does not mean that the civilians of those nations are incapable of thinking for themselves or breaking from their governments’ political interests in order to do the right thing. I wanted to highlight that trust can be built by standing strong in one’s personal moral compass, even if that means defying orders. Kaleb is able to gain Caitlyn’s trust not because he saves her life, but because he proves to her that he sees her as a person, not as a pawn for his government to use. Kaleb watches the way Caitlyn is willing to sacrifice pieces of herself to save other people. His trust is born of respect, not just for her intelligence and determination to expose the truth, but her empathy as well.
If you could ask readers to think about one real-world issue after finishing the novel, what would you want it to be?
Pesticides are a HUGE topic across the nation right now, especially in the Midwest, where commercial farming is widespread. We now know how insidious they are: impacting our water, food, animals and ecosystem. It’s not just the Midwest dealing with the fallout. My hometown in California is investigating a cancer cluster. Those of us who grew up there know that it is tied to pesticides that are excessively sprayed on our golf courses and residential areas. We have been complaining for years about the overuse of pesticides without community approval. And now we are seeing dire consequences of not fighting harder. We have to ask the question: is it worth it? Is it worth the health of our children, who are developing rare cancers at an alarming rate? Is it worth the health of our pets who are dying young and younger, also from aggressive cancers? It’s a very controversial topic, but we can no longer ignore the poison that is literally on our front doorstep, contaminating our food supply and our backyards. Operation Black Horse mirrors this issue we watch Caitlyn struggle to expose the truth as corporate and government interests attempt to silence her. I want people to think about what they would be willing to sacrifice to fight for the truth and save the ones they love.
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | Website
Sixteen years into the Great World Famine of 2025, Dr. Caitlyn Svendsen’s patients are no longer hungry thanks to America’s classified growth formula designed to outsmart famine, but they are still dying. The cause of their illness is a mystery that Caitlyn seeks to unravel despite the risk to her career-and life. Meanwhile, Spetsnaz Commander Kaleb Volkov is as restless as his motherland. Russia is still starving, denied access to America’s growing techniques.
Caitlyn and Kaleb are the epitome of clashing personalities, raised to resent each other in a world teetering on the brink of destruction. She is Russia’s salvation. He is the eye of a storm heading for America, ready to tear her reality apart.
While America blackmails enemies and allies alike into submission with the promise of food, Russia is desperate to restore its influence in the wake of America’s agricultural domination. To level the playing field, Kaleb is tasked with a mission that leads him to Caitlyn, forcing the two natural enemies to work together in a world plagued by famine, disease and now … WWIII.
Can they overcome their mutual distrust to save what’s left of humanity?
A Red Age
A Red Age by Sage Osterberg and Ulysses Kittilson is a sprawling piece of military science fiction, dystopian fiction, dark fantasy, and dinosaur fiction that treats its dinosaur civilization as a fully developed political and cultural world. The foreword makes that ambition explicit, presenting the novel as an attempt to expand what dinosaur stories can do, and the book follows through with governments, religions, propaganda, ancient histories, military bureaucracies, mass media, technology, class divisions, and generations of resentment. The opening assault on Juliobriga establishes the tone immediately: this is a violent, profane, frequently funny war story in which soldiers joke their way through sewage, gunfire, terrible decisions, and gruesome deaths. From there the story expands into a much larger conflict between the Coalition and the Alliance, with political leaders, soldiers, spies, royals, civilians, and prisoners all getting caught in the same machinery of war.
One of the strongest parts of this dystopian novel is its willingness to let the world feel messy. The Coalition and Alliance each have ideologies, grievances, heroes, monsters, competent people, fools, opportunists, and characters who genuinely believe they’re protecting civilization. Cartassius, in particular, gives the political side of the story some weight. His concern that victory achieved through atrocities will simply plant the seeds of the next war gets at one of the book’s central ideas: civilizations can become trapped inside the stories they tell about their enemies. Zamma approaches the same problem from another direction, questioning the endless cycle of violence while surrounded by a royal culture that treats warfare as inheritance. Meanwhile, characters such as Kuyucak, Thalsos, Botilda, Asgremis, Zorphax, Hassa, Akragos, Izmit, and others broaden the novel into something closer to an ensemble war epic. There’s a lot happening, but that density suits a world where political intrigue, religion, espionage, family loyalty, military ambition, and personal survival are constantly colliding.
The book’s personality comes from how readily it mixes horror with absurdity. Horrific combat can sit beside bureaucratic incompetence, vulgar arguments, terrible advertising, propaganda broadcasts, religious references, and jokes that arrive at the least dignified possible moment. That combination gives this dark sci-fi novel a distinctly satirical streak. Even when the stakes reach an almost apocalyptic scale, everyday stupidity keeps intruding. The effect is especially sharp near the climax, when the Nemesis weapon transforms military victory into catastrophe. A single strike wipes out a fleet and then produces consequences far beyond the triumphant moment its users imagined, turning soldiers from both armies into equally terrified creatures running from the resulting destruction. That sequence captures the novel’s larger view of war beautifully: technology, nationalism, faith, revenge, and ambition can dress violence in grand language, but eventually the violence becomes bigger than everyone who thought they controlled it.
By the end, A Red Age feels like the opening movement of a much larger dinosaur science fiction saga, and its cliffhanger embraces that serialized quality. Kuyucak’s final blood-pit sequence folds together several of the novel’s recurring interests: spectacle, propaganda, captivity, exhaustion, violence as entertainment, and the strange possibility of finding agency inside brutality. That sequence turns the gladiatorial spectacle into something unexpectedly bleak, giving Kuyucak’s storyline a darker emotional edge before the novel closes on a chaotic final note and the promise of Part 2: A Poisoned Sky. It’s a fitting ending for a book that keeps escalating its world while maintaining a rough, conversational sense of humor. Readers drawn to military science fiction, dystopian fantasy, and dinosaur fiction will find a strange and remarkably committed world here, one where prehistoric bodies carry rifles, argue about politics, worship gods, watch trashy entertainment, make catastrophic choices, and inherit the same old problems of power and violence.
Pages: 518 | ASIN : B0FVRXDNJ8
A Fine Line To Walk As A Writer
Reset follows a desperate man living in a society where, on your fiftyth birthday, you are returned to your 25-year-old self, and he has to choose what to do with this newly granted time. What first inspired the idea behind the Reset itself?
About 15 years ago I thought of the idea for RESET. I was past 40, my parents were now in their 60’s and the idea of aging was front and center. I had been through a divorce and remarried and thought about how my decisions when I was younger were not the best. As they say: the youth is wasted on the young. I thought about what I would do if I was young but had all my current knowledge. The idea for RESET came to me then.
Tom’s decision is understandable to some readers and deeply frustrating to others. How did you approach writing him?
The hardest thing with writing Tom was to make him a clearly selfish person but then to rebuild his character over time. How selfish to make him and how much he needed to do for readers to rethink their initial feelings on Tom was the hardest part of writing him. It was a fine line to walk as a writer and kept me up many nights trying to thread that needle.
The Awakeners emerge from fear and resentment. What role did contemporary society play in shaping that movement?
The current society has a huge generational divide, and a big part of The Awakeners was using the generational divide in the to gain power. It was very instrumental in shaping that narrative.
Given the opportunity, would you choose to Reset?
The simple answer is yes. However, there are scenarios where I would not Reset. Going into those may give away too much so I will leave it at that.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
“A very enjoyable novel that explores themes that resonate with today’s societal issues… I would definitely consider using it in one of my classes.” — Sander Lee, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, who teaches a class in science fiction novels.
Tom and Elena Miller built a beautiful life over nearly three decades of marriage. But as Tom approaches his fiftieth birthday, the crushing weight of his middle-aged responsibilities and a desperate desire for freedom drive a wedge between him and the people he loves most. He doesn’t just want a break; he wants a second chance at his twenties.
In a society defined by “The Reset”—a global anomaly where anyone turning fifty wakes up in their original, twenty-five-year-old body—Tom’s desire becomes a devastating reality. He chooses to undergo his Reset and leaves his forty-eight-year-old wife behind to live in a downtown bachelor pad, assuming he can just return to her when she finally Resets eighteen months later.
But his selfish “intermission” shatters his family. While Elena struggles to rebuild her life and identity without him, his oldest son, Jack, is driven into the arms of a radicalized movement determined to end the “Immortal Class” by any means necessary.
As Tom navigates the lonely, surreal reality of his new youth, he is about to discover that reversing the clock on his body might mean permanently running out of time to save his family.
