Synopsis
Rise of the Locusts by Mark Goodwin is the first novel in his Cyber Armageddon series. The series follows a SOC Supervisor at a financial institute from the discovery of a breach through to the shutdown of critical infrastructure in the United States.
The first half of the book focuses on the main protagonist dealing with a breach that acts a lot like ransomware. The technical details used, the setting, and the initial actions were all very realistic and well done. The story is very interesting and hits on a lot of real situations.
After it is determined that a major shutdown of all financial services is going to happen, the protagonist decides to head for the hills with her family. The remainder of the story focuses more on surviving the initial wave of a crisis but keeps referring back to how the ransomware attack is devastating the country.
My Reaction
The main protagonist is interesting in the first novel. She suffers from anxiety and is an introvert. This is used in an interesting way until she is suddenly very confident towards the end. Overall though, I do like her as a character although the rest of the characters fall a bit flat.
The author is a Christian writer with a heavy conservative bias, but that didn’t seem to creep in much. Every once and awhile there is a weird comment or reference, but I just blew past them. Each chapter opens with a Bible verse, but I’ve seen that done before in other stories as a literary device rather than to put things in a religious context. I think the latter is what the author was going for, but its easy enough to ignore if you are not religious. There is a sudden chapter long Christian sermon/rant towards the end of the novel that is a bit jarring, but I don’t think the whole book should be tossed because of it.
That said, I did read the sequel novel “Feast of the Locusts” and the author dials the political and religious topics up to 11. He does not address any cyber security related topics except the occasional reference to why things are still so bad. It is a very jarring contrast to the first novel and feels like a betrayal if you didn’t know the author was a Christian novel writer.
Recommendation
I recommend this novel to cyber security professionals looking for a realistic portrayal of an attack and a family’s reaction to that attack, especially if you like readying about “prepper” tactics. There is enough technical information for cyber security professionals while still being readable for lay persons. If you are easily offended by conservative or religious concept, then perhaps you can pass on this one.
As for the sequels, I only recommend those books for religious people looking for a good Christian thriller. The sequels do not have any noteworthy cyber security topics, but instead focus on prepper communities.