A Men Trilogy

A Men Trilogy

This epic sci fi noir by John Trevillian has a fierce dark heart with fantasy mythos at its core. Follow the journey of the Nowhere Man, a soldier fated to change humanity with a banned fairy tale.

Jack – the Nowhere Man – is a man with a self-induced case of no memory. He awakens in the chaotic metropolis of Dead City on the eve of its destruction; the only clue to his former life is a handwritten note in the pages of a banned fairy tale book, “Forevermore”. Marked for death in a peacekeeping force sent to quell the Dead City riots, Jack finds sanctuary with other renegades on the streets of Dead City. Battling to survive, they form the infamous A-Men, misfits held together by a shared dream: to be special. Everything changes when they go down the rabbit hole on meeting Dr Nathaniel Glass and his mysterious experiment locked deep beneath the Phoenix Tower…

The A-Men trilogy can be categorised as hardboiled Sci-Fi and Future Noir with a strong dose of grand mythic fantasy for added measure. It’s an exceedingly well-written dystopian work, but – we won’t lie – it might best appeal to fans of anarcho Culture-head Iain M. Banks (when he’s got his sci-fi hat on), cyberpunk renaissance man Neal Stephenson and dark and brooding fantasy author Stephen Donaldson. It’s fast-paced, but the A-Men features dense writing and plotting. Every word is razor-sharp.

The world of the A-Men is a dystopian divide between the haves and have-nots. The wealthy live in vast and desirable space stations, far above Earth’s impoverished ghost towns. Dead City is an earthbound riot zone crawling with gangs fighting for territory. The first book in the trilogy introduces us to five characters who tell the story through their eyes – often covering the same events from an entirely different point of view. Feisty hairdresser Pure dreams of becoming a media star along with her transvestite girlfriend. 23rdDxenturyboy is part human, part dog, all street kid – he escapes the riots with his best friend, also a canine mutation, to re-enact his VTV dreams. Locked away in secrecy with his team in an abandoned HQ, D’Alessandro – son of the greatest inventor of the 22nd century – has embarked on an experiment to power a virtual reality biocomputer using the brain of a whale. Sister Midnight, our favourite A-Man, is a fascinating creation: A devout Christian warrior who kicks seven different kinds of ass. And then, finally, we have the Nowhereman. Who is Jack? What is his destiny? What threats does he pose, and to whom? Jack wakes on board a space vessel with self-induced amnesia and dim recollections of events he may come to regret. His only link with his mysterious past is a dog-eared copy of an old (and banned) fairytale, ‘Nevermore’.

On the surface this is dark and fiercely charged future noir shot through with glimmering moments of sharp humour, but threading through the sci-fi action is a deep love and understanding of fairy tales as a strange mythos begins to emerge, taking you into a new reality: part dystopian sci-fi, part fantasy wonderland, all twisted broken genius.

Forever A-Men, the concluding book to this three-part sci-fi tour de force, has just been released and it switches Dead City for the crystal arks of the thirteen corporate colonies. Jack comes face to face with the full extremity of D’Alessandro’s master plan. Awakening as Godking in the fantasy realms of Forevermore, effectively trapped within the pages of his own fairy tale book, Jack realises his only chance at redemption is to reform the A-Men for one last incredible adventure. With the help of Pure, Dingo the Wonder Dog and the blind, psychic detective Arken Ellis Winterman, Jack finds his path leads inextricably back to D’Arkadia, his family’s deserted starstation, for a final confrontation with the terrible past he has tried so desperately to escape. An eye-opening final chapter to the A-Men trilogy, this is a story of the realisation that nothing is forever, and of identifying what is important before it is far, far too late. A Stephen Donaldson theme if ever we heard one! And, as any accidental visitor to a goblin market will know, a theme not uncommon in fairy tales, too…

See all the A-Men books by John Trevillian

Buy Forever A-Men on Amazon

See all the A-Men books by John Trevillian