Stat Crusher

Snow falls sideways across the northern perimeter, thick grey flakes plastering against the hundred-metre concrete bastions of Fort Sterling. Inside Classroom 302 at High School No. 6, the radiators hiss like dying pipes, blowing stale, rust-scented heat across forty-odd teenagers in stiff chairs. The man at the front of the room has the stats of a legend and the patience of someone who has buried everyone he ever loved. He wanted to teach. The frontier has other plans and is not interested in his objections.

Stat Crusher is a post-apocalyptic action fantasy about an overpowered protagonist who is tired rather than thrilled — a century-old veteran dragged back into a wasteland that never stopped needing him.

He is very good at all of it, and that is the least interesting thing about him. There is an auction to snipe, a schoolroom standoff to settle with a written score, corridor bullies to demolish one-handed, and an injection day that costs forty-five minutes of hell. There is a 99 percent anomaly that nobody can explain, a one-minute contract with sixty seconds inside it, and a twenty-million settlement that solves money and nothing else. Out past the gates there are barriers, checkpoints, iron-marrow bulls, dust ambushes in torrential rain, and a fiend squad that has been waiting for someone with his numbers to finally show up.

The action carries weight because he has already lived through the version of this story where winning costs everything. He is not trying to prove anything. He is trying to get the kids through the winter.

For readers who like overpowered protagonists with something to lose, wasteland frontier settings, and fight scenes where the stakes are people rather than rankings.