Such a great book to round off my year of 2023. There was incredible world-building with solid and fascinating characters amidst an addictive and unique story. Magic, steampunk, dystopia, revolution, love & family…..I couldn’t have asked for more. It really surprised me!
Full review on YouTube

There was a lot to like about this book. The setting was unique: I've never read a book set in a dieselpunk fantasy country loosely based on Mexico with radios, souped-up motorcycles, and enough tacos that I got quite hungry! The aesthetic of the book was cool. There were also mushrooms that let imbibers sync mentally and emotionally with each other, an examination of colonialism, and a totally different way of looking at sex and relationships.

There were also things I didn't like so much. That last bit about sex and relationships, for example. The culture that we learn about is pretty much entirely polyamorous and all the characters we see (except for one who is asexual) look at sex as a nice way to spend time but are entirely undiscriminating about who they have sex with. There's no jealousy, there are no main characters who are in real relationships except one who is being monogamous to humor her partner who is from a different culture. And there is no drama whatsoever. Human beings just don't work like this. Consensual sex releases endorphins and makes connections with others; it's a chemical and biological thing and responsible polygamy with communication and consent of partners doesn't seem to be a thing at all here. The ultra-free sex unfortunately plays a little into the "passionate and promiscuous Latin" stereotype although I don't think that was the author's intention.

That aside, the book began with the POV of a fascinating character, Nalia. She was out to try to change her world and fight back against a system of oppression. Unfortunately, we don't stick with her too long and spend most of the book with Wenthi, a member of one of the less privileged castes in the caste system who has bought into the whole caste system nonsense and is a cop. He never really seems to question his beliefs even after being surrounded by people who are trying to upend the system and find justice.

One of my friends asked me when I knew I was disappointed in the book. It was when we came upon the revolving orgy chamber with beds bolted to the floor and radios bolted to the bars of the spinning cage and our characters proceeded to have a mushroom induced telepathic orgy to connect to the hidden mastermind of the revolution. Now this might not disappoint you at all! YMMV.

3.5 star review.

After finishing what he calls Phase One of his Maradaine saga, Maresca has opted for a change of pace, with the stand-alone deiselpunk action fantasy The Velocity of Revolution. And it’s one of his very best books, fueled by familiar themes but taking them full throttle down storytelling roads less traveled. You aren’t likely to read a fantasy novel this breathless and propulsive in any given year. Even its title is a stroke of inspiration, its double meaning referencing both the role motorcycles play in the story and the speed at which the revolutionary spirit can take hold when an oppressed people rise and say “Enough is enough!”

Complete review is available at the accompanying link.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2022 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2022/01/readers-advisory-announce-2022-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

This is an exciting story packed with conflict in a well thought out world. We follow a patrol officer going undercover to infiltrate a rebel cycle gang while sharing his mind with a captured rebel who hates him and what he’s doing, and that he’s using her knowledge to carry out his mission.
The story starts out with a lot of different things happening, and especially once Wenthi gets to the city there are a lot of different characters, to the point where it’s a lot to juggle. But the story really picks up and offers a lot of twists.

I am presuming that The Velocity of Revolution is the first installment in a new series and not a standalone because there is no way you can leave the book the way it ends, and not be expecting more. You really want to know what this book is about? Motorcycles, psychedelic mushrooms, and lots of orgies. Mostly motorcycles and mushrooms. The story is set in a (Mexican or more general Central-American inspired) place which has been colonized and where the (white) colonizers have built up a strict caste-system. The less indigenous blood you have and the whiter you are, the easier your life will be.

People with mostly indigenous heritage live in slums and struggle to survive, leaving them with not much energy to fight this status quo. Discovery of the world is told in two viewpoints. Nália, next to the bottom caste, a cycle rider and mechanic, who is involved in the revolution. Wenthi is a cycle cop who patrols and is next to the top caste with his mother and half-sister at the top. He's also polyamory. Never before has anyone managed to catch those thieves. Wenthi gets a chance to prove himself by going undercover to infiltrate the gangs and find the head of the rebels.

Nália meets Wenthi when he catches her and arrests her after she robs a train. In order to infiltrate the gangs, a bizarre mushroom ties Wenthi's consciousness with Nália's consciousness so he can access her knowledge and abilities. This mushroom called myco also allows him to fully connect to the gang that he is infiltrating which leads to a variety of orgies. Slowly, he works his way from the bottom of society into the center of the gangs. The story develops as Wenthi learns through Nália about the revolution, its leaders, the true history is an emotional journey, as well as his own uniqueness. They each have their eyes opened to the truth of the current government and lives of the people.

So, my review may come off on the sarcastic side a bit, and that's only because I wasn't prepared for how different this story is from all of the rest of the books this author has written. I am not a huge fan of everyone having sex with everyone else. If that is your cup of herbal tea, you'll love this book. There is plenty of action in this story. I would have also enjoyed a bit more worldbuilding. I understand that this is a society that is being transformed into something supposedly better. But better from whom is the reason for the rebellion, and how Wenthi ends up growing as a character. If this does continue into another book, I do hope the author explains the reason for his choices and what part Wenthi's sister may play in the future. There's a whole entire story to tell about Wenthi and his sister who he protected when times were really bad.

Unfortunately I am DNF’ing this at 30%. I might pick this back up in the future, but I am not meshing with the story or the writing right now, and I don’t feel that it is the book for me. I think people will connect with this more than I have, which is why I am giving it 3 stars- I see the potential. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.

HIGHLIGHTS
~everyone uses motorcycles and it is always sexy
~monogamy??? never heard of it
~the mushroom goddess is in the radios
~all the radios
~the most mouthwatering tacos ever
~magic drugs
~when the system breaks you down, break the system

This is, without question, one of the best books of the year.

To start with, this is dieselpunk fantasy, which I don’t run into too often – the magic in Velocity is intimately and powerfully tied to speed, the kind of speed which can only be achieved with the help of an engine, and so everything from motorcycles to trains have their own magical (and arguably spiritual, within the context of the story) significance. And that’s a brilliantly interesting concept all on its own, when so many storytellers choose to pit magic against technology, casting fantasy and science as some kind of enemies; instead, here, they’re intertwined, each a vital half of the whole.

(And for the record? Where ‘steampunk’ is most often used as a descriptor for a specific aesthetic, and as a term has kind of lost any connotations of rebellion-against-the-system, when Velocity calls itself dieselpunk, it means punk. The clue’s in the title: this is a book that is all about questioning and fighting against the system, up to and including tearing it all down to start over. It’s punk as hell.)

The book’s blurb does a pretty good job of summing up the basic story: Wenthi is a police officer, one of the first people with native blood to make the cut. This is probably in large part because his mother is a very important woman, but also helped by the fact that Wenthi completely buys into the status quo, which has his country beggared as all its resources are sent abroad to their ‘allies’, and the population is divided up into a caste system which can be summed up as: the more native blood you have, the lower down you are on the ladder of ‘people who matter’. Wenthi has absolutely drunk the kool-aid, to the point of being freakishly calm and accepting even when he’s mistreated or abused because of his ethnicity. Whoever’s running the propaganda, they’re clearly very good at it.

When his superiors realise that, for whatever reason, Wenthi can slip through the magical warning system used by the rebels – one which means they can always feel the cops coming, and thus always slip through their fingers – he’s sent undercover. With one invaluable resource: a mind-link to an imprisoned rebel that will make his true identity impossible for the rebels to detect.

But honestly, that doesn’t capture even a fraction of the awesomeness that is this story.

Let’s start with the worldbuilding. The book opens with a quick definition of the different castes, and although the words sounded strange to me (as someone who only really has a grip on British English), the terms are normalised so quickly by the narrative that I didn’t have to go back to check the definitions even once. Usually I can’t keep fantasy words straight at all, so kudos to Maresca on that! The system’s pretty simple; as I said above, basically, the more native blood you have, the lower your caste – and the worse your treatment by everyone from law enforcement to the rations office. The country, originally named Ziaparr (also the name of the capital city) was renamed Pinogoz after several rounds of war and colonisation, and the native Zapisians are somewhat Latinx-coded, both in appearance and culturally. Pinogoz is run by the llipe (the highest caste, people who have none or almost no Zapisian blood) and the zoika, who are ‘respected foreigners’ – tourists, and the people who make up the ‘occupational oversight government’. Your caste determines which parts of the city you can access (and how much hassle or outright abuse you can expect at the check-points), the amounts your ration cards are worth…way, way too much.

This all sounds reasonably complicated, but honestly, Velocity is so immersive that after the first chapter I had it all down. What’s interesting is that we get three perspectives of the state of the country through the three POV characters; Wenthi, Nália, and Ajiñe, Nália being the rebel who was captured and is now mind-linked to Wenthi, and Ajiñe being another rebel whose cell Wenthi infiltrates. And it’s just…absolutely mind-blowing how all three of them can look at the exact same thing – the city they all live in, people they all interact with, the system that governs it all – and see such different things. I don’t think Velocity would work nearly so well if the reader only got Wenthi’s view, and I don’t think the…the absolute injustice of it all would hit so hard without us getting Nália and Ajiñe’s perspectives. Although Wenthi does, over the course of the book, start to unlearn his brainwashing and internalised racism, getting big chunks of the story through Nália and Ajiñe is invaluable in making the book as great as it is.

Still on the worldbuilding: the biggest thing you need to know about Zapisian culture? Is that they do not have the same view of sex (or romance) that the industrialised West does. Zapisians are hugely sex-positive and often engage in group sex and what we would consider group marriages, and it would be easy to say that they have a very casual approach to sex, but I think that’s misleading. They engage in sex often and easily, but it’s not casual.

“I mean, how can you even think about sex with all of them when you’ll just as soon arrest them? Ezodi.”

“It’s not like that,” he said, bristling at the invective she just used. Bristling because it wasn’t a lie: he was fucking without any spirit. Hollow.

It’s a contemptuous insult, describing someone as a person who ‘fucks without spirit’, and that’s really telling. We can infer, then, that the norm is fucking with spirit. That means something different for me than it does for the Zapisian characters, but I think it makes it pretty clear that Zapisians don’t engage in casual, meaningless sex. They have sex a lot, and with people they may not know super well, but it’s never meant to be meaningless. It’s quite beautiful and a fascinating bit of worldbuilding.

(Also? One of the main secondary characters is asexual, which is something that’s recognised and respected in Zapisian culture. I cannot tell you how ridiculously emotional I got at finally seeing an idealised sexually free culture with space for asexuality!)

But maybe the aspect of the worldbuilding I was most impressed with was everything the main characters didn’t know. As a colonised people, a lot of their history and culture has been taken from them, suppressed or destroyed, and so there’s this quiet thread running through Velocity which is the characters learning about pre-colonisation Ziaparr. In another book, this would be clunky and clumsy, and I’d dismiss it as too much telling-not-showing – but here, Wenthi and the rest of them have to be told. Because they don’t know. And the effect this creates is the feeling that the reader is on this journey with Wenthi and the rest, because they are learning these things just as the reader is learning them. It’s incredibly clever and very intimate; you almost feel like you’re intruding, in some scenes, as though you should slip out quietly and leave the characters to these intensely private, powerful discoveries.

Maresca is one hell of an amazing writer, is what I’m saying.

And gods, this book – Velocity is not your typical revolution fantasy, okay? There’s not just one bad guy who can be killed and then everything will be magically perfect; the story doesn’t skim over or handwave the practical difficulties inherent in overthrowing a system. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a book tackle the topic this way; fantasy loves idealism, but nothing about the situation Velocity‘s characters are in is idealised, and they know it.

“Let’s say for the sake of argument, the revolution is successful. We reclaim this country. What does that look like? What is justice in that country? What is the law there? Who decides what it looks like and how do we make it fair?”

The deeper Ajiñe’s cell is brought into the rebellion’s ‘inner circle’, the more doubts they have – not about what they’re doing, but about what the end result is supposed to be, supposed to look like. It’s a brutal realism that most ‘fight the system!’ stories don’t go near – because they’re hard, difficult questions, and there’s no magic wand to summon up an easy answer. But Velocity goes there.

And none of that tells you how incredibly compelling this book is; how quickly the writing flows, how impossible it is to put the book down once you start reading. Maresca’s story carries you along like Nália’s treasured motorcycle, and just as the speed makes magic in Nália’s world, Maresca’s writing works its own magic on the reader. It’s all so damn powerful, a river that runs fast but deep. The skill with which Maresca handles Wenthi’s arc is just… I’m in awe. It’s careful and delicate and gradual, and it’s a gods-damn masterpiece.

“Are you afraid they’ll find out what you are?” She came up close to him. “Or are you afraid you’ll find out what you are?”

This is a book with found-family and polyamory, with queerness so casual there aren’t even words for it, with goddesses in the radios and mushrooms that tie minds, hearts, even bodies together. This is a story about colonialism and unlearning internalised racism; about what it means to be cut off from your cultural history and identity, and how to get those things back. It’s about figuring out what a revolution, and its aftermath, would even look like, about the difference between idealism and practice and how to get from one to the other. It’s about magic and empathy and finding something to believe in, and what you’ll do to make it happen.

It’s fucking awesome.

And it’s out on Tuesday. Go preorder your copy immediately.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and read everything Maresca has ever written ever.

TL;DR: BUY THIS BOOK!

This review was originally posted on <a href="https://booksofmyheart.net/2021/02/06/the-velocity-of-revolution-by-marshall-ryan-maresca/" target="_blank"> Books of My Heart</a>
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<i>Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.</i>

So maybe I looked at the blurb for <strong>The Velocity of Revolution</strong> because there was a motorcycle on the cover.  I'd been aware of this author; the publisher had offered me other books but I didn't want to read them without having read earlier books in the series.  I'm uncertain as to whether this is a stand alone but I'd be open to more books if it becomes a series.

The world-building was fantastic.  There wasn't just a dump of facts but a gradual unfolding of the aspects through the characters and the story. The setting is a war torn country occupied and ruled by invaders.  There is a class system and the original people of the country are at the bottom, working and starving.  It's basically systematic racism.

Discovery of the world, comes through two viewpoints. Nalia, next to the bottom caste, a cycle rider and mechanic, who is involved in the revolution.  Wenthi, is a cycle cop who patrols and is next to the top caste, with his mother and half-sister at the top.  They meet when Wenthi catches her and arrests her. Their development as they learn about the revolution, its leaders and the true history is an emotional journey. They each have their eyes opened to the truth of the current government and lives of the people.

There are many characters who are also well developed.  Even the briefest roles, seemed authentic.  The world is pansexual, and very different from my own life experience or what I normally read. The sex is not detailed, and is pretty much off page. The "feel" while not the story, plot, characters or anything else, felt like Joel Dane's Cry Pilot series.  Both had groups of people used and abused, as well as characters in grave danger, fighting for survival.  I feared for the lives of these people I wanted to thrive.

There is also the mushrooms (drugs) which have a variety of uses. Rumors and propaganda about them obscure reality.  They are a key part of life of the original people and a tenet of their fight for survival.  I don't appreciate man's inhumanity to man so I can really get behind those trying to improve things.  I really enjoyed <strong>The Velocity of Revolution</strong> and would like to see more of this world.

Synopsis: The country Pinogoz has racist oppressors, implementing a harsh caste system. Out in the suburbs, people give "happily" their food and petrol for the oversea military, and starve thereby. 


Nália is a member of a Robin Hood like motorcycle gang who rob petrol from government trains. But Wenthi, a police officer, arrests her despite of her superior ability with her modified bike. 

Never before has anonye managed to catch those thieves, and Wenthi gets another chance to proof himself to his superiors. He gets the mission to infiltrate the undercaste suburb and find the head of the rebels. 

A special mushroom drug merges Nália's consciousness with his own so that he can access her knowledge and abilities. Slowly, he works his way from the bottom of society into the center of the gangs. 

What he finds there makes him ask his own history, convictions, and his country's foundations.

Review: Motorcycle, mushroom drugs, racing ladies, and mixed gender romances - how cool is that? 

Maresca shoots off a high velocity plot which never lets you off from start to finish. The atmosphere is thick and stylish with pimped motorcycles, high-stake races, police hunts, and mushroom loaded Bacchanalia. 

The LGBTQIA folks will cheer at this novel, which conjugates each and every letter of the acronym, up to a well integrated asexual woman who heavily dislikes those sexual activities. 

It is not that easy to classify the work into one of the typical subgenres. First of all, it is a Dieselpunk story - think of technology equal to the 1940s, i.e. without computers, surveillance drones, or mobile phones. Together with the police state, racial discrimination, and caste system, you'll get a rich dystopia full of comments about social systems. Adding to that is the fantasy like magic of joined group consciousness induced by the mushroom which lets Wenthi develop to a superhero.

There are rough and criminal acts, but one can easily identify with Nália, because her folks are so heavily oppressed and in high need of her "good" deeds. On the other side, it would be easy to just hate the oppressors, if Maresca wouldn't have done such a fine job with the other main protagonist Wenthi. He represents the orderly type, the hope of the middle class, and caring for the all the people of his country. He doesn't like the idea of a civil war, and sees himself torn between several front-lines - that of his own family, his police friends, and the insights into the rebellion's background. 

This action stuffed novel works very well as a standalone, but I wouldn't be too surprised to see a sequel. 

Recommended for readers of high-octane character-driven dystopian Dieselpunk.

While reading this book, I assumed this was the first in a series. Because there was no way all these problems could be solved easily (or quickly). It is set in a (Mexican or more general Central-American inspired) place which has been colonized and where the (white) colonisers have built up a strict caste-system. The less indigenous blood you have and the whiter you are, the easier your life will be. People with mostly indigenous heritage live in slums and struggle to survive, leaving them with not much energy to fight this status quo. Meanwhile, the colonisers and those light-skinned enough to live comfortably enough have obviously no reason to change it. So getting rid of the dark lord isn't going to do much because legislative, executive and judiciary are filled with people who never went hungry under him and so won't see any reason to change anything.

Of course, I didn't expect to get one book about the revolution and then one about drafting new laws and parliamentary debates (because that would have a very niche market) but I did expect more acknowledgement that it's still going to take time and effort to make things better again. As it was, over two-thirds of the book were really hammering home the "there's no single dark lord who is responsible for all our misery" message only to take a sharp U-turn at the last moment and go "but if we press this magical switch it's going to be all fine" and then veer slightly to the right and mumble "there's still some vague unspecified stuff to do but really not much". Now the magical switch felt a bit odd at first and I do wish there had been some more time to set it up but overall it did fit in the story. But I really would have wanted a slightly more open end. As it is, it tied things up far too quickly for me and seemed too rushed.

The Velocity of Revolution is one of those books that fully absorbs you. You pick it up, thinking you’ll only read a bit before bed, and an hour later, you finally pull yourself out of it reluctantly because it’s sucked you in that much. Reading this feels like I imagine being on myco — the drug in the book that links people together and enhances the world around them — would.

I will admit that this book and I got off to something of a rocky start. Not in the sense that I wasn’t sure I’d like it — I knew from the start that I would — but there was a lot of terminology and worldbuilding thrown at you. Yes, it was explained, but for whatever reason, my brain just refused to keep it straight. Even now, I’m not entirely sure I could tell you it all. There’s a ruling elite, and a caste system based on how much blood you share with that ruling elite (i.e. whether you have relatives belonging to there). I remain somewhat lost on all the names and just how the ruling elite came to be, with the wars and empires and everything.

But fortunately, it’s not a book where being unable to keep track of all the nitty-gritty is a huge problem. And once I stopped trying to, I sped through it. Really, my problem was not understanding it while reading the book, but remembering it.

In the book, Wenthi, a policeman of sorts and son of one of the ruling families, is sent undercover to infiltrate a rebel movement because, somehow, he is the only person who they cannot sense coming (for reasons that are explained in the book but require more exposition than this review is going for). Using myco, the drug I mentioned before, he is linked to a captured rebel so that he can use her knowledge in finding his way in.

This is a book that you expect to be fast-moving and full of action, and it really does deliver on that front. And this is where its intensity really works too — you feel as though you’re there on the back of the cycles with the characters. The stakes are high, the plot is rapid and full of twists and turns, and this is the primary reason why, once I got into it, I didn’t want to put it down. This, to me, is the best of fantasy.

But it wouldn’t be much use to have such a great plot if you didn’t also have great characters, which this book does in spades. It’s a book that switches back and forth between POVs. Primarily, you have Wenthi, who is infiltrating the revolution, but there’s also Nália, the rebel he is linked with, and a third POV belonging to one of the rebels he is infiltrating (and here my inability to remember names strikes again, but I did love her). You can’t help but love them all, even though you know Wenthi is there to betray them and bring them down.

So this is a book I would highly recommend you pick up when it releases because, trust me, you won’t want to miss out.

Absolutely rollicking, thoroughly unique dieselpunk fantasy! Maresca has crafted an intricate world with deep roots and populated it with amazing characters, each sympathetic and understandable even as their life experiences often place them at seemingly-irreconcilable odds with each other. The political and social nuance in the book is both enthralling and exciting, a web that will ensnare the curious and reward those willing to join Maresca on a high-octane ride.

This was surprisingly good fun!! With a lot of important social and political themes tied in intelligently. I loved the way the caste system works in this world, how it called attention to racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and the criminalization of drugs (specifically psychedelics and ancestral medicinal).

*spoiler* I don’t love the savior element at the end, where it seemed like the upper caste folks, even though they had faced some oppression of their own, were the ones who saved the day.

I am going to keep this a spoiler light review since I have the ARC finished about a month before the book is out. If you’ve read the author’s other books (and I really recommend that you do!) this one has a very different style to it. There’s an early modern level of technology with radios, motorcycles and cars and trains. Perhaps 192os tech level... There’s really only one magic thing in it though so don’t expect the same high fantasy with magic everywhere stories as his other books.
The story is set in a conquered land with a rigid caste system and things are very bad for the lower castes. The one little bit of magic in this story is a mushroom that can connect minds. A terrible war ends roughly 15 or 20 years before the start of the story so the children old enough to remember the final days are adults in their 20s by the time of the story, It’s both very character driven and situation driven as the characters react to pretty awful situation around them. The characters are well fleshed out and react logically to their circumstances. The story does stand-alone nicely! I enjoyed it and look forward to whatever this author writes next.