Blog Tour! - The Louisiana Republic by Maxim Jakubowski - Blog Tour!

This is a helluva of a good novel. Another reviewer has categorised it as “speculative noir” and I have to agree. These days speculative dystopian fiction tends to be Young Adult (The Hunger Games, etc) and it was refreshing to read something squarely aimed at a more mature audience; I could be wrong of course, some YA is distinctly mature, but I don’t think so, The Louisiana Republic is treacly noir.

This dystopian world is set against an unexplained global catastrophe in the past, referred to as “The Dark”; an event that deprived the world of technology. The written word – as in physically written, for of course digital media is no more – has once again become the main source of information. Meanwhile, the United States has failed as a state, the city of New Orleans having seceded from the rest of America in the aftermath of The Dark.

The protagonist of this novel is a reluctant private eye, recruited by the elder sister of the daughter of a gangster who is missing. The case soon becomes more complicated than he imagined, and he has to travel to New Orleans for answers.

The Louisiana Republic in some ways walks familiar tropes: it’s both a PI novel (complete with femme fatale hiring him for a job) and a road trip novel, familiar territory to many a reader of crime fiction. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with familiar tropes, especially if they’re written with panache. The author, Maxim Jakubowski, achieves this, but he goes further. The setting of this novel, the atmosphere that he conjures, is really something special and elevates this novel beyond what might be expected.

In conclusion, The Louisiana Republic is really worth a read. If you like crime fiction, dystopian fiction, noir, this might well be the novel for you.

5 out of 5 stars