Devil’s Road, by Gary Gibson (Brain in a Jar Books) | review by Stephen Theaker

After reading the heartbreaking If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, a book that began with a jailbreak was just the ticket. After five years in prison, Dutch McGuire is woken up by unexpected darkness in her cell block: the power is off and every door unlocks. She has no release date and so has little to lose by trying to escape. Unfortunately, some inmates are intent on using this time for revenge, and so Dutch finds herself assailed by cleaver-wielding Anna Dubayev, the Cannibal of the Steppes.

Should she survive this encounter, subsequent pages will find Dutch captured by those who enabled the breakout, and whisked away to Japan, where she will be required to take part in a race around the island of Teijouan, the domain of giant monsters ever since a portal opened there in 2035. Her new employers don’t want her to win the race, they want her to get to the portal. But before the race even begins there will be assassination attempts and the need to acquire a car that will give her a fighting chance in the race.

If it’s not already obvious, this is essentially Death Race taking place on Godzilla’s Monster Island, and it’s pretty much as fun as that combination sounds. Though the cover art attracted me to the book, I visualized the story as drawn by Carlos Ezquerra, because it reads like early 2000 AD. Like other characters in this subgenre, Dutch is not at all a good person – she used to run drugs for the mob – but she is fun to read about. The action is clear and exciting, there are some great monster encounters and excellent villains, and it’s all packed into 150 pages. Just the ticket. Stephen Theaker ***