Title: Dissonance, Volume I: Reality
Author: Aaron Ryan
Publisher: Independently published
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian
First Publication: 2024
Language: English
Book Summary: Dissonance, Volume I: Reality by Aaron Ryan
Sergeant Cameron “Jet” Shipley was there when they first arrived in 2026. For 16 long years, he learned to hide, and to never make a sound. Learning the most important rule of all about the aliens: You just… don’t… look. The year is now 2042, and humanity is eking out an existence in the shadows. Shipley and his team are sent out on a recon mission with developments that may alter the trajectory of Earth’s fate… and his own. Joined by newcomers Bassett and Trudy, Cameron and his brother Rut will have to contend with terrifying aliens that have annihilated eighty-five percent of mankind. Will his mission lead him on a slippery slope of discovery that demands accountability? Or will it plunge humanity, and everything in it, into further dissonance?
Book Review: Dissonance, Volume I: Reality by Aaron Ryan
It seems like every day we wake up to more news of violence, political unrest, the threat of war, and impending environmental catastrophe hanging over our heads. While we try not to think about it, in the back of our minds lurks this nagging fear – what if everything falls apart? What if modern civilization collapses and we’re left to fend for ourselves in a post-apocalyptic hellscape? It’s the stuff of nightmares, and the driving force behind some of our most compelling science fiction stories.
With his gripping debut novel Dissonance, Volume I: Reality, author Aaron Ryan thrusts readers headlong into one such nightmare future scenario. But what makes this book so engrossing isn’t just the vividly realized world he has created. It’s the fundamentally human questions the narrative poses about survival, morality, grief, and the fraying bonds of trust that hold society together. This is no trite disaster fantasy but rather a searing character study writ large across a richly immersive sci-fi canvas.
The year is 2042, and Earth has been overrun by a terrifying race of alien beings known as “gorgons.” These sleek, pale creatures have the ability to paralyze humans with a supernatural form of telepathy or mind control, freezing anyone who looks upon them in place to be easily devoured. It’s a concept that Ryan mines for maximum existential dread – who among us doesn’t have a deep-seated primordial fear of being hunted and consumed?
In the 16 years since the gorgons first descended from the skies, they have wiped out a staggering 85% of the global population. The few pockets of survivors have been driven underground, taking shelter in makeshift military bunkers dubbed “Blockades” and scavenging for supplies amid the ruins of civilization. Our entry point into this harrowing new reality is through the eyes of a 23-year-old infantry sergeant named Cameron “Jet” Shipley stationed at one such Blockade in Clarksville, Tennessee.
From the first visceral pages depicting Jet’s frantic escape from a gorgon pursuit, it becomes immediately clear that author Ryan is not pulling any punches. This is harsh, uncompromising territory devoid of reassuring cliches or easy outs. In Ryan’s telling, the gorgons are utterly implacable forces of nature, rendered in exquisitely inhuman and grotesque detail. There will be no simple deus ex machina to make everything okay again – in this world, stark terror and unspeakable loss are the norms.
What makes Jet Shipley such a compelling hero to follow into these nightmarish trenches is that he has already endured more existential trauma than many could bear. Orphaned by the gorgon assault in his youth, he has lost his entire family save for his younger brother Rutledge, nicknamed Rut. This sibling bond is beautifully depicted in the quieter, more tender moments sprinkled amid the carnage.
A high-stakes mission to implant a tracking device on a live gorgon goes disastrously awry, resulting in devastating consequences. What’s most impressive is how deftly Ryan handles the emotional recoil of this loss, never resorting to shock value or cheap sentiment. In the immediate aftermath, Jet begins to splinter, questioning both the mission’s purpose and the true motives of the military leadership he has faithfully served. It’s a gut-punch of haunting authenticity that reverberates deeply.
Yet Jet is no one-note brooding anti-hero. As portrayed by Ryan, he is a well of roiling, contradictory impulses – valorous, selfless, and consumed by a righteous sense of purpose one moment; festering with simmering rage and mistrust in the next. We’re reminded again and again that he is fundamentally still a young man in the thick of life, negotiating trauma compounded by the bitter aftertaste of first love. His burgeoning relationship with his teammate Ally offers tentative flickers of light in the enveloping darkness, tapping into that intrinsically human need for connection and solace even when all seems lost.
It’s a testament to Ryan’s skill as a character writer that every member of this rag-tag ensemble emerges as a fully realized person coping with unfathomable circumstances. Whether a grizzled veteran like Joe Bassett or a plucky young newcomer recruit like the character Foxy, each has an authenticity and complexity that renders them more than mere expendable extras. We feel the true weight of every casualty, every sacrifice – because we come to understand these are more than just stock players. They are battered survivors simply trying to do the right thing and clinging to the lingering embers of hope that one day, normalcy will be restored.
It’s a credit to Ryan that Dissonance never feels anything less than richly inhabited by living, breathing human beings – however heightened and dire the circumstances they’re living through. He deftly sidesteps the pitfalls of many genre tales by neither fetishizing the violence nor lingering in gratuitous cynicism. There is genuine pathos to these character journeys, allowing the horrors they endure to cut deeper.
And those horrors are rendered in unblinking, immersive detail. Ryan wields a robust, confident prose style that imbues every skirmish and chase with maximum visceral intensity. The numerous action set pieces detonate with adrenaline and claustrophobic intensity, yet never lose sight of the fragile human components making each life-or-death decision. This is muscular yet thoughtful storytelling that draws you into the trenches while pondering the ethical responsibilities implicit in waging war against a seemingly implacable force of “alien” invaders.
For just as Jet Shipley begins to unearth more troubling layers of deception and violation of trust from his own superiors, so too does Dissonance burrow ever deeper into morally murky territory. What destructive lines are justifiable in crossing while defending against an existential threat? Can we trust the institutions we’ve built to uphold core values – or are they destined to start devouring themselves from the inside out when survival itself becomes totalizing? With its unflinching depictions of battlefield atrocity and sudden reversals of loyalty and purpose, Ryan’s narrative casts a harsh light on the ways traumatic upheaval can unravel the very fabric of society.
What’s most unsettling about Dissonance is how it gleefully scrambles the traditional assumptions of apocalyptic storytelling. Yes, there is horror lurking in every shadow, with pitiless alien monsters eagerly awaiting any stumble into darkness. Yet the true threat may not be these tentacled terrors, but rather the icy machinations of our own leadership tearing apart our basic humanity. Time and again, Ryan refuses easy outs or conventional designations of good guys vs. bad guys. The villains here are circumstance itself, fraying mental resiliency, and the corrosive gravitational pull of moral compromise.
Rather than settling for high-concept catastrophe or adolescent power fantasies, Ryan aspires to something far more thematically, psychologically, and philosophically rich with Dissonance. Time and again, we are confronted with moral Event Horizon scenarios – instances when characters are forced to contemplate the seemingly unthinkable simply for hope of enduring one day longer. It makes for viscerally unsettling reading, as if the very core of our ethics and beliefs are constantly being prodded and tested like raw exposed nerve endings.
But that is precisely what makes Dissonance’s terrifying universe so vital and resonant as both speculative fiction and an allegory for our contemporary moment. This is a book about facing harsh, uncomfortable realities without flinching – about staring into the profound darkness both literal and existential without being swallowed whole. Even when the ultimate survival of the human race is at stake, Ryan argues, we cannot afford to abandon the core tenets of conscience, accountability, and human compassion that define us. To do so is to sever ourselves from any true existential purpose worth enduring for.
By the climactic closing chapters of Dissonance, Volume I: Reality, the story has steadily built up a considerable reservoir of both catharsis and moral indignation. When long-simmering revelations about the nature of the gorgon conflict finally detonate, it arrives as a bracing shock amplified by the foundations Ryan has laid for us. It’s a bold subversion of expectations and refusal of tidy answers or facile heroics – and one that sets the stage for this saga to evolve in thrilling, uncompromising directions.
Most crucially, as the book closes with Jet contemplating a reckoning that was inevitable from the start, we’re viscerally reminded of what’s truly at stake here. It’s not merely the fate of humanity – it’s the essence of what defines humanity itself. In the face of civilization’s collapse and the inexorable rise of a species of monsters bent on our extinction, how do we maintain our core values, ethics, and belief in goodness? Or will the only path be a descent into dissonance ourselves, abandoning everything that makes us distinctly and wonderfully human?
Dissonance, Volume I: Reality leaves our nerves thrillingly frayed and our spirits rattled by the sheer accumulation of horrors and violations of trust witnessed. Aaron Ryan has established himself as a bold new voice willing to dispense with the safety nets of many genre tropes in order to confront the darkest, most primal impulses lurking within survival narratives. Yet even when the terrain grows blackest, the human soul is the beam of light at the heart of his story, illuminating all our most cherished hopes and ideals. It’s this pursuit of meaning and integrity that gives the book its beating, bruised heart.
Where Dissonance goes from here is anyone’s guess. But Ryan has created a fictional universe expansive enough to contain a plethora of unexplored territory and devastating new challenges. At the same time, the groundwork has been laid for an emotionally fraught, character-driven saga of perseverance. With a deft blend of gut-punching action and existential reckoning, Dissonance, Volume I: Reality augurs the rise of a starkly compelling new voice in speculative fiction. Make sure you have a front row seat as this saga unfolds – because the real terror is just beginning.
