Fang-Freakin-Tastic Reviews

GUNS, CARS AND KAIJU: Death Race 2000 meets Pacific Rim in a gritty tale of survival and redemption.
Nobody has taken part in the Devil’s Run annual road race as often as Dutch McGuire and lived to tell the tale.

The racecourse circumnavigates the post-apocalyptic ruins of Teijouan, and with a choice between being eaten by the monstrous Kaiju that prowl the island’s devastated cities or murdered by her fellow racers, the odds against surviving another Run, let alone winning it, are slim.

Dutch doesn’t care about the odds nearly so much as she cares about getting back behind the wheel of her beloved Ford Falcon—except for one problem: she’s spent the last five years incarcerated in a high-security prison for her part in a heist.

So when a crooked billionaire offers to put her back in the race on condition she uses it as cover for a secret retrieval operation, she can’t refuse.

Can Dutch survive assassins, monsters, and psychopathic drivers long enough to complete her mission as well as take part in the race—or is this the year death finally catches up with her in a blazing tangle of wreckage?

I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Every year where I live there is a car race of sorts with the name of The Gambler 500. It’s original mission was for the racing community to come together and clean up the roads they drive on. Also the 500 means your vehicle can not be worth over 500 dollars. Which having seen some of them, and having some at my parent’s business, I can tell you that 500 is arbitrary. Lately however, it is just a big party. Now there is nothing wrong with a party, I like a good party. However, when the original mission of cleaning isn’t happening then what is the purpose?

Devil’s road is about a car race, but it is also about the future, the past, and what a single person can do to make things right. In the future when a portal unleashes terrifying monsters, a brave few every year race through the island, trying to beat not only the other racers, but the monsters.  Only a few people have seen the Kaiju and was able to tell others about it. Dutch McGuire is not only a racer, but she is one of the only people to successfully survive the Devil’s race multiple times.

That is why when she finds herself in a far off prison someone works to set her free. Their letting her go is not without wanting something in return. They want her to race in the Devil’s race. She is all for that, I mean if she can get her car. However, they want her to do specific things while there. One of which is to not finish the race. Something that Dutch has never done, and her intelligence and questions start to get her in trouble.

Now I am all for a good car story, I have read a couple lately actually. Add in monsters, a race with no real winner, and a dystopian type future? Sign me up. This is a good story, and one with an end that I was not expecting. It was the end that I now know I needed in my life, but not one that I was expecting. I think that is what took this book from a four fang to a four and a half fang. It wasn’t just a good story about how a young woman is up against the best of the best. No it was also one about how she found herself on the Devil’s road. A place that chews drivers up before eating them, she found what she was looking for, even though she didn’t know what that was.

Maybe I am looking too much into it, but for me this was about a race. It was about monsters, and it was about a young woman trying to carve out a small bit of herself when everyone wanted a piece. Some people may want it longer, and I would have been okay with that. However, I think that it was the perfect length for what the author was trying to convey. Overall a good story about a girl and her car.

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About Gary Gibson

Gary Gibson's first novel, Angel Stations, was published in 2004. Interzone called it "dense and involving, puzzling and perplexing. It's unabashed science fiction, with an almost "Golden Age" feel to it ..."

His second novel was Against Gravity in 2005; the Guardian described it as "building on current trends to produce a convincing picture of the world in 2096."

Stealing Light was first published in 2007, and garnered a wide range of positive reviews. The London Times called it: "A violent, inventive, relentlessly gripping adventure ... intelligently written and thought-provoking".

Stealing Light is the first volume in a four-book space opera, the final volume of which, Marauder, was published in 2013.

To date, Gary has written ten novels, most recently Extinction Game and its sequel, Survival Game.

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