Debt Collector Season One

By: Susan Kaye Quinn

Narrated by: Max Miller

Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

What's your life worth on the open market?

In this sexy, gritty future-noir, debt collectors take your life energy and give it to someone more "worthy"...all while paying the price with black marks on their souls.

Lirium plays the part of the grim reaper well, with his dark trenchcoat and jackboots - he's just in it for his cut, 10 percent of the life energy he collects before he transfers it on to the high potentials, people who will make the world a better place with their work and their lives. That hit of life energy, a bottle of vodka, and a visit from one of Madam Anastazja's girls keep him alive, stable, and mostly sane...until he collects again. But when his recovery ritual is disrupted, he has to choose between doing an illegal hit for a girl whose story has more holes than his soul or facing the bottle alone - a dark pit he's not sure he'll be able to climb out of again.

Originally written as a serial, Lirium is season one of the Debt Collector series and contains the complete story of Lirium. Each season is told from the perspective of a different debt collector.

©2013 Susan Kaye Quinn (P)2013 Susan Kaye Quinn

A solid genre mashup

'You never know when it's your time to go.'

But what if you did? What if someone could tell you when your time was up - or how much you have left?

'Youth is wasted on the young.'

Further, what if someone could take that time from you, or give you more? What would that life be worth? How much would you pay? Is the reverse true as well - how much money can you get for your life?

Such is the world of Susan Kaye Quinn's "Debt Collector." Lirium, our trenchcoat-and-jackboot-wearing protagonist, is sanctioned to take life and give it to another. Good work if you can get it, but it's not as easy as it sounds. The job takes its toll - physically, mentally, and emotionally. He grows throughout the book to learn what he can and can't - and shouldn't - do.

I love a good genre mash-up - paranormal romance, historical mystery, even military courtroom drama. With "Debt Collector" you get the combination of science fiction and the noir crime novel. The combination works pretty well. The key to making it work is knowing how to work the formulas of each style in concert. For the sci-fi side, the book takes one thing ("taking your time"), changes it, and sees how society might react. That works really well for this concept as we get to see the good and the bad.

The bad is where the noir side kicks in - gangsters, prostitutes, smuggling, corruption, and hard drinking. More importantly to the noir concept than setting, though, is the idea of choices and consequences. The protagonist deciding who is going to be - choosing to do the right or wrong thing, and weighing the cost of doing so. To me that inner struggle is what makes or breaks a good noir and we get it in spades here. Lirium really struggles with what he is - how to be a good man doing what he can do. That struggle makes for compelling characters and good storytelling.

Max Miller does a good job with the narration. There are a lot of accents to juggle throughout the story and he handles them well. Kudos to SKQ on her selection of narrator; he fits the noir style like he is a gumshoe from a 1930's detective movie. It really helps set the mood throughout the book.

I mostly know the author from her young adult offerings. This book completely breaks that mold - it's definitely not for kids! What it is, though, is a great piece of speculative science fiction wrapped in some good old-fashioned noir storytelling. If this is what "not for kids" looks like, all I can say is "give me more."