In Frank Faustino's page-turner SALVATION, former SAS operative Jonah Grady returns to a fascist dystopian America to sell his dead parents’ estate. Everything in his home country harbors ghosts from the past that Jonah is prepared to dodge. However, he soon finds himself boxed in and being hunted by homophobic fascists in the name of redemption. These hunters come armed with futuristic technology, while Jonah’s weapons are his masochism and training.
SALVATION's prose champions brevity without compromising clarity and cadence. Faustino establishes settings with sharp and poetic descriptions in just a few lines: “The rising sun coaxed gray from black. Color bled back into the world." Likewise, the similes are nuanced: “The barn listed to one side like a drunk finding his balance.”
Faustino subverts the stereotypical queer tropes with his representation of a gay protagonist who used to be an SAS operative, while also succeeding at grounding deeply complex and layered characters in their trauma and backstories. Jonah’s masochistic tendencies are grounded in a strictly religious cult-like upbringing that deprived him of any parental love. Pain soothes him because he was never comforted with love. His parents’ characters are portrayed as greedy hoarders, not just strict religious fanatics. Their lack of love for Jonah feels plausible because their materialism is very well established.
Faustino justifies every extraordinary skill that Jonah demonstrates with a short but effective backstory, as is clear in lines like these: “He took up all the space he owned at the moment. Every inch earned through war, through torture, through surviving things this man couldn’t imagine.” The author also adopts an episodic narrative structure, even ending each chapter on a cliffhanger. The plot is consistently paced, which keeps the narrative from ever becoming too dense. Meanwhile, the world-building is flawless; this dystopia set in the near future is completely believable, and the subtly explained futuristic technology never distracts from the core horror of fascist ideology taking over the world. Faustino also demonstrates an awareness of consent by establishing the power imbalance in a transactional sexual encounter without romanticizing it. The character’s desperation is fully realized before the explicit sequence.
Faustino trusts his audience, which is a testament to his restraint in craft. The narrative is cohesive without being context-heavy, resulting in a novel that works in every way it wants to.
With nuanced queer representation, a plot that maintains its momentum the whole way through, impeccable world-building, and sharp prose, Frank Faustino's action-packed SALVATION is a perfectly executed thriller.
~ Maria Zafar for IndieReader