Fatal Domain
Fatal Domain (Travis Brock #2)
By: Steven James
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2024]
“There is always a cost to doing what’s right. Sometimes it costs you everything you have. But it should not cost you everything you are.”
“‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’”
This book takes place about a month after book one—Broker of Lies. It can probably be read as a stand alone but I would recommend reading the first book first for background and context. He reminds us about part of what happened but I think it will be more cohesive for you to have all the information.
It was a great sequel that leaves you on a cliffhanger so I’m ready for book three to be out!
Similar to Broker of Lies, there are a lot of characters and there is some complexity to the plot. Hopefully my review can help you keep it straight (or myself when I go to read the third one and can’t remember what was going on.)
[There was a fun Easter egg referencing Patrick Bowers and if you haven’t read Steven James’ Patrick Bowers series and you enjoy serial killer thrillers, definitely check that one out!)]
Plot Basics
Our main character is Travis Brock, redactor with a photographic memory who works at the Pentagon. After stopping the Pruninghooks Collective from detonating a bomb in Knoxville, TN last book he and his team are still chasing the woman behind it— Janice Daniels.
His team is made up of Adira (former secret service and executive protection at Homeland Security) who is also a love interest for Travis, and Gunnar (military and private security consultant who also happens to be writing a romance novel).
Their boss is Clarke and they’re running a somewhat off-books operation running down leads on Daniels and what she is planning next.
Turns out she’s after the Project Symphony device which is focused on “surreptitious ways of exfiltrating data from air-gapped computers to obtain administration privileges, record keystrokes, detect or hash passwords, upload files, discover log-in credentials, or obtain access to closely guarded root system files.”
Pretty powerful. Obviously very bad to get into the wrong hands.
Pretty early on in the first book I suspected that Travis’s wife, Sienna, didn’t really die in the house fire 18 months ago. By the end of that book (SPOILER- she didn’t) we find Sienna speaking to Janice saying she was “preparing for what’s next. With Ivan.”
In Fatal Domain, Travis discovers this hard truth. That if Sienna didn’t die in the fire, she lied to him and she very well could be his enemy.
Not only do we have Janice, Sienna, and Ivan as players, we are introduced to a man named Soren who Daniels blackmails into doing some of her dirty work. He was probably the most disorienting part of the book because I wasn’t sure how he was going to connect with everything. I also wasn’t sure if I felt like the circumstances around his blackmailing made sense to lead to that point. I don’t know why he wouldn’t have just called the police and said he wasn’t sure what he hit and couldn’t find it. At least there would be a record of him trying to help. I guess I don’t know if you can still get prison time for that. But anyway, his chapters were the most disconnected until the end. I don’t know what his deal was. I guess James was taking a character and showing us in real time the progression from ‘normal’ to a choice to descend into darkness.
“When we play God, there are always unintended consequences that make it clear we’re not up to the task. He creates life in his own image. We create monsters in ours.”
We also have Maia Odongo, a doctor researching cognitive function and memory at a humanitarian refugee camp in Uganda.
“Ever since she agreed to do the procedures she’d been struggling to convince herself that she was making choices that were aligned with what she believed in, with what was right.”
Maia is the counter to Soren, someone who has made the descent, though with good intentions, and seeking to come back to the light knowing the destruction darkness causes and knowing it’s not the right path.
From South Carolina to Wisconsin, all paths eventually collide in Washington D.C..
I will say, it felt a bit strange that Janice was invested in anti-nuclear escapades in the first book but here in the second book she is also invested in tech and pharmaceutical industries. I guess she can have diverse interests and can shift between them so fluidly while she is being hunted by the DOD…
I thought it was interesting how we don’t really know what Janice Daniels is up to until the end. We have the pieces but we’re not entirely sure what the endgame is. So it was hard to tell how close Brock and his team were to thwarting her plans.
Sienna’s part was also vague. It seemed like Sienna and Ivan had other plans with the device than Janice. They were working together for the moment, but Sienna had a different ultimate plan. We never do find that out in this book. I suspect that we are gearing up for an ultimate showdown between Travis and Sienna, husband and wife, lovers to enemies? There is not much closure for her here so there has to be something more on the horizon.
There is also more to happen between Travis and Adira. Now that Sienna is still alive, that puts a pause on their romance. So the showdown with Sienna will also be the indicator of what direction Travis goes.
Deeper Thoughts
I love that Steven James always wrestles with deeper questions when he writes his thrillers. This one is no different.
In Fatal Domain, one of the characters ponders the difference between humans and animals. The traits we don’t share with animals: worship, prayer, guilt, culture, art, regret. I think this is really interesting to think about. Especially for evolutionists. These traits don’t jive with that. There is something special about humanity that points to a Creator God who desires relationship with us. Those things are important to our nature.
Another character reflects on the verse that says “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more…” (Rev 21:4). He points out, “If God wipes away our tears in heaven, it means some people will arrive there with tears still in their eyes, that maybe their lives were so full of pain that some of their tears spilled over into paradise.” I don’t know how theologically accurate this thought it, but it is interesting to think about.
James also explores what we are willing to sacrifice for the good of others.
“Sometimes we keep secrets to protect interests greater than our own, and sometimes we have to carry the burden of our secrets as the price for extending compassion to others.”
This isn’t an obscure moral dilemma and is explored in many books. It is a tricky one because every life is precious. It’s easy to see how the ends justify the means and how we draw lines around what we are willing to do or allow to reach those ends.
I also think it’s different from an individual perspective vs a governmental perspective. What a country must do to protect its citizens is different than what an individual should do. God gave governments the sword of justice to wield— rewarding good and punishing bad— that is not right for us as individuals to undertake on our own.
There is also the tricky aspect of accountability vs national security. What can we do to keep our powerful government accountable without divulging secret information that puts our country at risk? This book also explores that a little bit. Morals and ethics are complex when it comes to things like that and I’m not sure where I stand. I like seeing different scenarios with this at play to think about how I view it.
Lastly there is a big theme of forgiveness. What does it mean to forgive? Especially when someone has done something so egregious and repeatedly.
“Revenge is being honest about the action but not loving toward the person. On the other hand, if you just excuse their behavior you might be showing them love, but you’re not being honest about the pain they caused. Denial has no place in forgiveness.”
“… it’s about freeing yourself.”
I have just come off of reading Homecoming by Kate Morton where I did not like how she handled the concept of forgiveness. To me it felt like excusing the behavior which like this quote says, feels dishonest. I really like how James makes this distinction and writes this complexity into his characters where they can wrestle with knowing forgiveness is the way but also dealing with the real and deep hurt that person caused.
It’s less about letting the person off the hook as much as allowing yourself to be free from the “cage of unforgiveness.”
Learning Corner
When you read a Steven James novel, you can tell that he does his research. I would love to meet some of his sources!
So here are some of the interesting things I learned while reading this book!
The NSA has a National Crytoplogic Museum in D.C. and it’s now on my list of places to visit. If this part is true there is an Enigma machine there where you can enter and create your own code. Sign me up!
Apparently it’s a thing for people to soak magazines in drugs and dry them up and send them to inmates in prison to either ingest or smoke or use as currency. Some prisons test for this.
If you Google the word Illuminati backwards the NSA website comes up. I’m not sure what the significance of this is but I’m sure there’s some people that could get some mileage out of that information.
There was a blurb about dark matter in this book which is interesting because I just recently read the book Dark Matter. In Fatal Domain he talks about the scientists who are researching dark matter. This is done by building a chamber a mile underground to block out cosmic rays. It also requires a lot of Xenon. “Whoever controls the Xenon controls the future of this type of research.” I’m still not entirely sure if I need to care about this kind of information or what I think about this mysterious substance, but I’ll keep an eye on it.
I had no idea that coffins were put in burial vaults— cement vaults to protect the coffin from the pressure of the ground and machinery above them. I’m wondering how common these are.
There is a riddle in the book: “What is the only word in the English language that starts with what we desire most and ends with what we want to avoid becoming.” You’ll get the answer if you read the book but if you want to know ahead of time, share any review from my website to your social media and message me a screenshot of it and I’ll give you the answer to the riddle! :)
Recommendation
Fatal domain is “the dominion of darkness and death and self-imposed chains.” This book continues the suspenseful saga of Travis Brock and how his team fights against this fatal domain, saving people and understanding humanity in deeper ways.
It’s a little more complex than your average thriller but still one I would definitely recommend to any reader!
The main characters are loveable, the stakes are high, the opponent formidable, the pursuit of justice and compassion on every page.
Steven James is one of my favorite authors and I will always recommend his work because he is a fantastic storyteller that can weave in deeper concepts into a thrilling story without any language or sexual content. Can’t beat that!
**Received a complimentary ARC via Tyndale House Publishers**
This book just released April 9, 2024. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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