Extremes is another page-turning suspense novel set on the Lunar Colony of Armstrong's Dome and follows the career of Miles Flint, Retrieval Artist and Detective Noelle DeRicci and their individual and combined attempts to see justice done regardless of the laws or lack thereof involved. The Retrieval Artist is a first rate futuristic suspense series written by a very talented author.

What does a dead extreme marathon runner and a dead Retrieval Artist have in common? At first glance nothing, but as Miles Flint starts to dig through the layers he is quickly becomes very suspicious that this is one Disappeared that should have been brought to justice.

When Flint is approached in a rather bizarre way by a high profile Law firm, he is immediately suspicious and their persistence only increases his curiosity. His mentor Paloma talks only in riddles, and his former partner Det DeRicci is incommunicado and working on a case where a very suspicious name keeps popping up.

Confirmation that the dead runner is not who she is supposed to be and the mysterious deaths and virulent illness breaking out among the marathon athletes has DeRicci completely preoccupied and when she finally calls Flint to check on a Disappeared named Tey, she finds out she may have much more that a case of murder on her hands.

A real page turner as both Flint and DeRicci race against time to control the death toll set in action by a brilliant and very twisted scientist. An excellent book, in an excellent series!

Having read THE DISAPPEARED by Kristine Kathryn Rusch just a few months ago and loving that first novel of The Retrieval Artists, you can bet that I was greatly looking forward to the second novel in the series, EXTREMES. The future that Rusch created in THE DISAPPEARED was one full of colorful characters, amazingly realistic alien species with well thought-out and plausible alien cultures and a fantastic stark setting—the Earth's Moon. The first book in the series was a taut thriller with a tight plot, one that evoked a lot of emotion by both the characters as well as the reader. For those of you who might've read my Book Review of THE DISAPPEARED in this zine earlier this year (Click here to read this, you already know how I felt about that work.

But, just a few pages into this second Retrieval Artist novel, I realized that I was in for something a little bit different this time. Although this book still takes place on the Moon and still involves the first book's main characters, DeRicci and Flint, the story is quite a departure from the alien-filled premise of THE DISAPPEARED. Instead, this story is more about the human race, us, you and me, and the triumph of the human spirit.

Of course, as the reader, you don't really know this until you're quite a ways into EXTREMES. But that's okay, because this book flows under its own magic, on a current that branches off from the aliens and their culture, so vividly depicted in the first book. Instead, this book reflects on human nature. On emotions. On survival. And it does it extremely well.

Much to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's credit, she was able to take this story and make it equally as enjoyable as the first book in the series while taking it on a widely divergent path from that first book. I must admit, I was hoping to see more of the exotic alien cultures that were featured so prominently in THE DISAPPEARED and I was a little bit disappointed once I realized that it probably wasn't going to happen in EXTREMES. But then this story grabbed a hold of me and, after a while, I no longer cared about those aliens...I no longer cared that this work wasn't THE DISAPPEARED—Part 2. What I did care about was this new take on the main characters, this new plot, the way that DeRicci and Flint tried to handle their new problems and...fulfillingly enough...about how the book was going to end.

As a reader...what more could you ask for? Rusch took a refreshing new look at these characters and took them out of the environment of the first book in order to explore them more in-depth in this one. And it worked like a charm. Risky? You could say that, but it worked and EXTREMES stands very well on its own, lends a new aura to the Retrieval Artist Universe and proves that these characters can do more than simply mingle with aliens in order to tell an entertaining story. EXTREMES also tells the tale of people pitted against ghastly odds and a deadly enemy and what they must endure in order to survive. Some of them don't...which lent a great amount of credibility to this story line. Some of them do and are left to wonder at how those who had died could have the courage to do what they did, to go on under impossible odds, with death surely staring them in the face, with only the hope that their actions could save others. A very refreshing story here, folks, and one that fans of Kristine Kathryn Rusch should enjoy very much. Triumphs of the human spirit even in the face of certain doom are qualities that we all would like to see more of in our fellow man. By having such a story take place in our not-too-distant future, it allows those of us in the here and now to feel a sense of hope for our fellow human beings and, perhaps, to bring a smile to our faces as we look up at the Moon at night. Well done...