The Ninth Metal (The Comet Cycle #1) by Benjamin Percy

 

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Ninth Metal (The Comet Cycle #1)
Author: Benjamin Percy
Publisher: 6.1.21
Release Date: Mariner 

Publisher’s Summary
IT BEGAN WITH A COMET…

At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became a planetary crisis when Earth spun through the comet’s debris field and the sky rained fire.

The town of Northfall, Minnesota will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This “omnimetal” has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source…and a weapon.

John Frontier—the troubled scion of an iron-ore dynasty in Northfall—returns for his sister’s wedding to find his family embroiled in a cutthroat war to control mineral rights and mining operations. His father rightly suspects foreign leaders and competing corporations of sabotage, but the greatest threat to his legacy might be the U.S. government. Physicist Victoria Lennon was recruited by the Department of Defense to research omnimetal, but she finds herself trapped in a laboratory of nightmares. And across town, a rookie cop is investigating a murder that puts her own life in the cross-hairs. She will have to compromise her moral code to bring justice to this now lawless community.

In this gut-punch of a novel, the first in his Comet Cycle, Ben Percy lays bare how a modern-day gold rush has turned the middle of nowhere into the center of everything, and how one family—the Frontiers—hopes to control it all.


My Review

If you would have asked me before I read this novel if I wanted to read an X-men-like origin novel about humans being transformed by a space material crashing to Earth, I would have firmly answered "no." However, I loved Benjamin Percy's The Dead Lands and now, after reading this The Ninth Metal, I'm firmly invested in The Comet Cycle series. There is warring between and within families, a town cult, government experiments, police drama, and political power plays all set within a modern-day gold rush. Multiple subplots would make this a great option for a television series. I especially loved honest and determined policewoman Stacie Toal and can't wait to see where her storyline leads in future installments.