Reaction Books in Order

The Reaction series sits closer to our own time, grounded in familiar landscapes and technologies rather than distant planets. It takes the tools of modern surveillance, energy research, and geopolitics and pushes them just far enough to feel both exciting and disturbingly plausible.

In Reaction / Chain Reaction, surveillance specialist Charles Gardner travels to Monaco to spend a few quiet days with his daughter, who is covering the long awaited ignition of the ITER fusion reactor. That plan unravels when he witnesses a young woman being murdered aboard a luxury yacht and realises the local investigation is being quietly shut down.

Digging into what he saw, Charles uncovers a plot by foreign operatives to turn ITER from a symbol of clean energy into a radioactive crater. With insect sized drones on his trail, uncooperative officials, and a hard deadline before the reactor goes live, he has to rely on his own skills and a handful of uneasy allies to keep both his daughter and thousands of bystanders alive.

The companion story Extraction follows Marcel, a fixer whose loyalties and personal life are shattered by the events in Monaco. When his lover is killed and his employer begins to suspect him of helping a French agent, he has to decide whether he will run, hide, or finally push back against the people who have controlled him for so long.

Where Kilby's space based series look outward to colonies and asteroid mines, the Reaction books look inward to the vulnerabilities of complex infrastructure on Earth. They pick apart the weak points in high profile projects, from security procedures to media access, and imagine what a small group of determined saboteurs might do if no one believes the early warnings.

The tone is tense and fast moving, but there is always room for character moments, especially in the strained relationship between Charles and his daughter. Readers who enjoy grounded technothrillers with a strong sense of place will find a familiar entry point into Kilby's wider body of work here.