When we first meet Rebecca Mines within the pages of Weston Ochse’s near future science fiction thriller, Velvet Dogma, she is the proverbial stranger in a strange land. After spending twenty years in a federal prison, much of it in isolation, for attempting to hack into and share secret government files with the general public, she finds a world radically changed from the one she knew before her incarceration, much of it to the point of unrecognizability. Advances in technology have occurred which she could not have possible predicted. Laws and social mores have morphed and evolved, often in less than desirable ways, along with these advances. And the physical landscape of the Los Angeles area, a place she once considered home, has been remade into a wholly different and sometimes bewildering place due to a particularly devastating environmental disaster.

As if all of this isn’t enough for a woman to suddenly take in, things go from bad to worse within hours of her release. She soon discovers that her internal organs are quite the marketable commodity as she has spent so much time in prison, protected from the debilitating effects of the city’s pollution. Organ levying is a generally accepted practice these days and hers have been auctioned off to the highest bidder. It seems that a group of trained assassins want to get their hands on all that valuable tissue, and they don’t want to wait for her to grow old and die of natural causes to attain it.

Next, Rebecca is informed that her brother—who she’s been waiting all these years to finally see again—has just been found dead in his apartment. The circumstances surrounding his death are a bit mysterious and our protagonist cannot help but wonder if her newfound freedom has something to do with it. At her brother’s apartment, she runs into one of his old friends, a guy by the name of Andy. Soon, the two of them find themselves on the run from gravboarding police officers on orders from a government that seems to have rethought the whole letting—Rebecca—Mines—out—of—prison thing. Apparently, some powerful people have decided that Rebecca is still a viable threat to their interests. Especially if she discovers the secret behind Velvet Dogma and what it is capable of unleashing.

A lot of the fun of reading this book derives from the way we explore this strange new world along with Rebecca. POD’s (Personal Ocular Devices)—computer interfaces that allow people to communicate with the world wide web directly from their brains—are all the rage these days, so much so that many people have become horribly addicted to the devices, wasting away in much the same way a modern heroine junkie would. Assisted living facilities, like the one in which Rebecca finds her grandmother, immerse those housed there in virtual worlds as their bodies grow older, more frail, and eventually die. Various underground societies—groups of people literally living under the ground—have rapidly evolved into communities based on rather strange and sometimes dangerous ideals. One group in particular known as the Day Eaters comes to mind. Its members have resorted to some rather extreme measures to prevent their organs from ever being levied by the corporations that would seek to purchase them.

Weston Ochse is best know for his horror writing. His novel, Scarecrow Gods, garnered him a Bram Stoker award for best debut novel. It seems, however, that he has spent some time reading a sci—fi novel or two as he builds a convincing enough and suitably exotic near future society within the pages of Velvet Dogma. Credit must be given to the author for keeping the reader’s interest while Rebecca gets her bearings and eventually becomes a more active protagonist instead of one who simply observes and reacts to the various situations in which she finds herself. And when she does, well, that’s when the real fun begins as she unravels the mystery behind Velvet Dogma and the threat it poses to the Powers That Be. Fans of old school William Gibson and Bruce Sterling books should find plenty to like here. As will those who decide to purchase the book and immerse themselves in a near future, dystopian society for the first time.