Dustball Air

Turning around, I surveyed my domain. How the hell I never got cut in the rusty abomination of a room, where no angles fit together quite right, always surprised me. I spied the coil that had been annoyingly poking me all night long, sticking through the seams of my mattress on the floor. The damn things were always springing out and stabbing me unexpectedly, causing me to freak out when I awoke in a pool of blood. Even though my room was a shitstack, I did have one prized possession, a heavily scratched-up dresser I had stolen from the bastard I just pelted with rocks. Gotta get pleasure in life from somewhere, right?

Heading for the sink-and-toilet combo I had stolen from a jail cell in the local marshal's office, I felt the threadbare, ragged ends of my tattered rug under my feet as I shuffled along. The combo was so small that it was the perfect size for my room. Without it, I would have had to try using Mom's without Fat Herald's eyes roving over me the entire time.

At the sink my gaze fell on the cracked, cloudy mirror. My eyes traced the cracks through the diagonal of the glass, which sent my reflection into thousands of crazy angles. The damn thing was useless, so I was never really sure why I had kept it. God knows I sure as hell didn't wanta see my face after Penny's comments about me being as pretty as a boy-toy. On the plus side, maybe I had another career path in my future at least, besides smuggling and stealing. Wouldn't Dad have been proud if I became a whore?

After rubbing my eyes to get the morning grit from them and wiping my wild hair out of my eyes, I kicked off my old underdrawers to let my boys breathe while I drained the lizard and stifled a wide yawn. When I flushed the toilet, the pipes groaned and rattled around a bit as if threatening to break open with a gush of raw sewage."

Dizzy himself will tell you his life-and his home-aren't any great shakes. But in Dustball, a place to live and a way to survive are things that don't come easy. It could help explain Dizzy's sarcastic, sardonic, and irascible personality-or it just may add to what was there from the start. Nature versus nurture-you know the old debate. Dizzy might know it too. Odds are, though, that he doesn't give a ****.

Desman Copper and his partner Fitz are working on a drilling rig creating the lines for the zipamotives, transport vessels that connect the floating rocks of Dustball through its complex web of gravity wells. But when he and his partner discover The Sphere, their lives change in an instant. An explosion leaves Desman horribly burned-and Fitz dead. The victim of corporate greed, Desman, aka Burned Man, escapes being framed and emerges a deadly pirate in search of vengeance.

Seeing an opportunity to provide closure to his past while cementing the path of his future, Burned Man's meatheads enlist Dizzy with the offer of a lifetime. What Dizzy doesn't know, however, is that he is quickly on course for a no-holds-barred rumble to get The Sphere, an adventure that will force him to be resourceful to stay alive-and to put into action a devious plan of his own.

Creating a new twist on the steampunk genre, the first installment of Kenneth M. Schuett's trilogy infuses it with a strong anime vibe while subverting the genre's usual hero trope, resulting in a thoroughly engaging and hilarious steam-propelled adventure that is second to none. Allowing adventure to take precedence over everything else, Schuett's non-stop, live-wire of a steampunk spectacle is driven by the most unique anti-hero the genre has ever seen, a rare combination of courageous, intelligent, resourceful, sarcastic, and flat-out offensive. Focused on the duality of humanity as it explores the deeper meaning of rage and love, Dustball Air reminds you to set your own course in life instead of letting others do it for you.